MARVIN ROWLEY
Family History and Management
of the OSU Research Forests
Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon:
1946–1986
Oral History Interviews by
Royal G. Jackson, Jennifer Lee, and Bob Zybach
Soap Creek Valley History Project
OSU Research Forests
Monograph #15
Soap Creek Valley, Oregon, Oral History Series
Monograph #1:Lorna Grabe. Family History and the Story of the Soap Creek Schoolhouse Foundation, Benton County, Oregon.
Monograph #2: Paul M. Dunn. Biographical Sketch and Story of the Adair Tract, Benton County, Oregon.
Monograph #3: Donald Dickey. Family History and Life on Berry Creek, Benton County, Oregon: 1928–1942.
Monograph #4:Edward Sekermestrovich. Life at CCC Camp Arboretum, Benton County, Oregon: 1935–1940.
Monograph #5: John Jacob & Wilma Rohner. Family Farming on Coffin Butte between World Wars, Benton County, Oregon: 1919–1941.
Monograph #6: James Hanish. Biographical Sketch and a Tour of Berry Creek, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon: 1930–1938.
Monograph #7: Charlie Olson. Biographical Sketch and Early History of Sulphur Springs, Benton County, Oregon: 1900–1920.
Monograph #8:Neil Vanderburg. Family Farming and Saw Milling on Berry Creek, Benton County, Oregon: 1935–1941.
Monograph #9:Eugene Glender. Growing up on a Tampico Family Farm, Benton County, Oregon: 1910–1941.
Monograph #10: Velma Carter Rawie. A History of the Carter Family and the Town of Wells, Benton County, Oregon: 1845–1941.
Monograph #11: Bessie Murphy. Botanizing in Benton County, Oregon: 1900–1991.
Monograph #12: Wanda Marcks Cook. The Story of the Sulphur Springs Stock Ranch, Benton County, Oregon: 1904–1939.
Monograph #13: William A. Davies. Biographical Sketch and Management of OSU Research Forests, Benton & Polk Counties, Oregon: 1946–1973.
Monograph #14: Charles & Norman Hindes. Family History and Story of the Soap Creek Sawmilling and Logging Camp, Benton County, Oregon: 1928–1931.
Monograph #15: Marvin Rowley. Family History and Management of Oregon State University Research Forests, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon: 1946–1986.
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MARVIN ROWLEY
Family History and Management of the
OSU Research Forests
Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon: 1946–1995
Oral History Interviews
by
Royal G. Jackson, Jennifer Lee, and Bob Zybach
Soap Creek Valley History Project
OSU Research Forests
Monograph #15
2009
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Acknowledgments
The purpose of this project is to better understand the history of an area that has been managed
by the College of Forestry since 1929 when Mary J. L. McDonald began making contributions
to obtain land adjacent to the Arboretum for what would become McDonald-Dunn Forest. The
Soap Creek Valley History Project is the outgrowth of an oral history project begun in the 1970s
by Royal Jackson under the direction of John Beuter. Funding for the Soap Creek Valley History
Project is provided by the Oregon State University (OSU) College of Forestry. The Soap Creek
Valley History Project was authorized initially in 1989 by Dr. William Atkinson, former Director of
the OSU Research Forests. The oral history portion of this project remained under Dr. Atkinson’s
direction until January 1994, when it was assigned to Jeffrey Garver, Manager of the OSU Research
Forests. In December of that year, responsibility for the oral histories was given to Ann Rogers,
Cultural Resources Manager for the OSU Research Forests. The project has since been continued
by Deborah Johnson and David Lysne.
This publication was produced by the Forestry Communications Group of the College of Forestry.
Special thanks go to Tim Hills, of McMenamins, for providing photos of the Multnomah Poor
Farm (now McMenamins Edgefield), and to the Troutdale Historical Society for allowing their use.
Publication by the OSU College of Forestry does not necessarily imply the endorsement or
support of views expressed herein.
Cover photo: Marvin Rowley standing on McCulloch Peak in McDonald Forest.
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Marv Rowley Oral History
Areas of Interest
McDonald-Dunn Forest
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Table of contents
Interviews
Part I. January 25, 1979......................................................................1
Part II. January 31, 1979....................................................................16
Part III. February 6, 1979...................................................................38
Part IV. February 7, 1979...................................................................44
Part V. February 23, 1991.................................................................57
Part VI. May 8, 1995..........................................................................97
Appendices
Appendix A. Marv’s Songs, by Marvin L. Rowley, Class of 1950......115
The Fernhopper Legend................................................................115
I Fell a Tree....................................................................................116
The Song of the Trees....................................................................117
The Saga of Mount Saint Helens, or
What Really Happened May 18...................................................118
Appendix B. Seventy-five Years with the Oregon State University
School of Forestry’s Forestry Clubs.....................................................121
Index...................................................................................................................127
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PART I - January 25, 1979
[Interview conducted by Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee at Peavy Hall, Oregon State University.]
What were the names of your grandparents?
My grandmother and grandfather were Gangles.
Gangles?
Gangle. That’s an Austrian family. My grandfather came from Austria; my grandmother was
born in Minnesota. Her mother had just arrived from Sweden. She was Swedish.
Why did they come to this country?
Well, I think my grandmother came here about the time there was a large migration from
the Scandinavian countries, and basically they left the Scandinavian country because of overpopulation. In those countries the wars of the earlier times had ceased, and they had a fairly
prosperous period. Large families had the tradition to divide the land among the sons. The
farmlands were being divided into unproductive areas. As I understand from talking to some
of these people, they actually raised funds to ship the sons off to America, or to help them get
passage to America so they wouldn’t have to break the farm into smaller units.
Do you remember your grandparents?
Oh, yes, my grandmother. My grandmother and grandfather were divorced. I just saw my
grandfather once. My grandmother had a real influence in my life. She was a real, oh, what we’d
call a “character” in a way. Real self-sufficient. She’d been left with a large family to take care of
herself. She washed clothes for people, did housework, picked fruit.
This was in Minnesota?
No, in Oregon. That’s after they’d come to Oregon that this happened.
Why did they come to Oregon?
Well, I think my great-grandmother and her husband had come to Woodland, Washington,
some time earlier. About 1910, my grandmother, grandfather, and family came to Oregon. My
grandfather had a variety of jobs. He worked in the woods as a busheler and a saw-filer back in
those days.
Are we talking about your [grand]parents on your mother’s side?
Yes, on my mother’s side. Of course, my grandmother cooked, and cooked in logging camps a
lot of times. On my father’s side—my father was born in Vancouver, and I was born in Portland.
Vancouver, Washington?
Vancouver, Washington. His family background, the Rowleys, came from early pioneer stock.
The earliest records in New England have Rowleys in them, and as far back as we know is
Saratoga County, New York, about 1800. The family came to Illinois about 1850, and on west
the next generations.
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What ancestry is that?
Oh, basically English. And my great-great-grandmother was French-Canadian. Her name was
Nepiere [Mary E. Nepiere]. But my father was born in Vancouver. His mother was a Manny,
and her family was a Scotch-Irish family. They were in the sawmill business in the Seattle area.
In 1905, my father’s family moved to Seattle and my grandfather worked for his father-in-law
in a sawmill where downtown Seattle is now. My dad and his uncle greased skids on a skid
road. I think as near as I can gather, it was near Lake Washington, probably around where the
University of Washington is.
Do you remember that as a kid?
No, no. That was a long time before I was born. I was born in Portland. They were only up
there three or four years, and then came back to Portland.
How did your father happen to come to Oregon?
Well, he was born in Vancouver, Washington. His family moved to Seattle, and then to Portland about 1906.
How did he come to Washington? Where did he come from?
Well, I don’t know. His parents were born in Illinois, and his grandparents were born in Illinois, and I think they came, too. I’m not sure if it was just his dad who came west, or if he
came with his parents. There were quite a few of the family in the Portland area, so I have an
idea that they kind of came together. At the time of the Second World War, every Rowley in
the Portland phone book was my relative—about a dozen of them. And now there are hundreds of them I guess.
That was in Portland?
Yes, in Portland. Everyone in Oregon was a relative I knew about, but there were a lot I didn’t
know about.
What year were you born?
In 1924. In Portland out near the Lents District. Are you familiar with it? When I was four
years old we moved to Tualatin, two miles southeast of Tualatin, to a place we nick-named “the
sticks.”
Why did you move there?
Well, the folks had bought a five-acre tract, and the place was called the “Comte and Colman
Tract.” All the logged-off areas had been subdivided into five-acre tracts. They wanted to get
out of town.
Was your dad a logger?
No, he was a printer. Practically all his life he was a printer. Although he worked at different
times, not in the woods, I wouldn’t say, but he worked around the woods people. Most of his
family, you know, were in the woods. My uncles were woodworkers on both sides of my family.
My mother’s only brother graduated from Oregon State University in 1939 in forestry. He
worked for the Forest Service and BLM [USDI Bureau of Land Management]. On my father’s side, I had one uncle that was a high climber for Bridal Veil Lumber Company from the
earliest I can remember. And other uncles, three of them—one was a railroad builder and one
was a busheler for Hines Lumber Company all his life, and the third was a sawmill worker.
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How did your mother and father meet each other?
They lived in the same area. The Rowleys lived on a street corner, and the Gangles lived three
houses east. I think my mother went to Lents School for a time when they were living in that part
of Portland, and my father graduated or he went through nine grades. That was in the Lents area.
What year did they get married? Do you recall?
1921.
How many children are there in the family? In other words, how many brothers and sisters do you have?
I have three brothers and three sisters, so seven in the family. Like I say, we were raised on a
stump ranch. We called it a stump ranch. My occupation during the high school days was to
go out and grub stumps when I’d come home from school.
Your earliest childhood recollections are from that period when you moved out on the five-acre tract?
Yes, I can remember living in Portland, but just barely. I go back and look for the house, and I
can’t spot it. But I think it’s still there.
Did your father continue as a printer when you moved there?
Yes, oh yes. He worked for several companies in Portland. He worked for Dunham Printing
Company in Portland, which is a job-printing, or at least a good-sized job-printing firm in
downtown Portland for close to 30 years. Then he started working for another company. He’d
started working when he was thirteen as an office boy for a printing company, and his father
died when he was—I think grandfather died in 1919 of the flu epidemic of the First World
War. He left quite a sizable family of young kids. Dad had been working. I think grandfather
was sick some before that, and Dad was working to help support the family for quite a time.
Was your mother employed?
Yes, she worked in Kerr Nursing Home, an orphanage type of home in Portland. She was
probably just eighteen when they got married.
So, after she was married she didn’t work?
No, she didn’t work after that.
What did your family do as a family? Did they have a lot of activities together?
Oh, yes. We did everything together. Like I say, we lived in a country area where, in those days,
you walked anywhere or rode. We had a Model T pick-up until 1938, I think. That was the
family’s chief means of transportation. Sit on the tailgate of the Model T Ford and ride along.
I remember falling out one time, and Dad never even knew it. And I ran along and caught up
with him.
Was one of your parents more important in your life, more influential, than the other one?
I don’t think so. I think they’re both important. I think our image of our father was probably
more dominant than our mother’s, but both were important.
You mentioned something about your grandmother having a large influence. Was she living with your
family at the time?
No, she lived close by. She was rather self-sufficient. She had to be in order to get by. The thing
that attracted kids was that she was always drying peaches and pears and apples and things.
She’d have gunny sacks full of these around when we’d go over to visit. Those were our goodies.
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What kinds of things did you do as a kid, for fun?
Oh, I’d run ragged through the cockleburs and corn.
That was for fun?
Yes. I was probably destined to be a forester or a logger from the beginning, just from what
I liked to do. This five-acre piece we had was surrounded by undeveloped country, and all we
had to do was go a few hundred feet and we were across the fence, and we were into the backcountry, you might say. Down the creek we picked wild berries in the summertime. Mother’d
can them, and we used to gather hazelnuts, get a sackful of hazelnuts. I never find them that
good now. Used to be able to find a bucketful on a bush.
You mean all seven of you went out and picked berries?
No, just a couple of us boys, or sometimes more than that. When I was a kid we found a
burned-out stump, a big old-growth stump that was burned out hollow. Had a hole burned in
the root. We gathered a bunch of old-growth bark and made a roof on the thing and made a
tree house out of the thing. We used to go over there and build a fire in it. That was our hut.
Did you have any neighbors when you were growing up?
Oh, yes. It was a rural area, and there were neighbors within 500 feet. One of the neighbors,
the Bryans, lived just southwest of us. We didn’t have a direct road to their house—there was a
road, but we had trails to everybody’s house. We’d build our trails that crossed—to grandmother’s house, a trail to the Bryans’ house. And then the roads went the long way.
How’d people get along then, with each other?
You know, this was during the Depression days, most of what I’m remembering. I think we
used to do a lot more sharing than they do now. You looked out for one another, didn’t have a
whole lot of money, but we always had plenty to eat, and everything like that. We always had a
cow or two on the place.
What do you remember about the Depression? Was that a difficult time for your family?
No. I’d say it wasn’t difficult for the most part. In 1936 was the only difficult year that I can
remember, and that year my dad was out of a job. The only year that he ever was, was during
that summer. He could’ve worked, but that was only one day a week, and that wasn’t enough
to live on, so he went to work with a neighbor fixing roofs. This neighbor was a deadbeat, and
dad worked the whole summer without getting a dime out of it. My mother and this kid were
picking berries out at the Gresham area for about six weeks during that summer. I guess the
big thing that stands out about that summer to me is that I ruined my shoes. I bought a new
pair of shoes, and I ruined the shoes drying them out underneath the camp-stove. I had to go
barefooted the rest of the summer, because I had no way to buy another pair of shoes. We were
swimming in the swimming hole, and my younger brother slid down an incline into the water,
and couldn’t swim. I started to take my shoes off, and decided the third time he went down, he
wasn’t going to make it, so I jumped in with my shoes on, and pulled him out. Got them all wet.
Was that the end of your shoes for the summer?
Yes.
When were your brothers and sisters born?
Oh, I’m the next-to-the-oldest. My sister’s two years older than I am, and then I’ve got a sister
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two years younger, and a brother four years younger, and another brother five years younger.
The oldest sister was born in 1922, and I think our youngest brother was born in 1937.
Your mother was busy raising children a good part of her life.
Yes, for a 10–12 year period. My younger sister was married when she was sixteen, so she left
home about 1938.
Did religion play a part in your life when you were growing up, in your family?
Oh yes. We went to Sunday school and church. When we moved out to the Tualatin area the
American Sunday School Union had a Sunday school going at a sawmill. There was a Barclay
Sawmill, and a couple–three houses built around it that they lived in, and they’d started a Sunday school there. I must’ve been five. We went to that Sunday school.
What church was it?
American Sunday School Union—that’s a rural mission type of—it’s nondenominational.
They’re sponsored by, I don’t know what group. I think it may be the Christian Women of
America, or something like that was behind it, an eastern organization. Eventually they built a
community hall in that area. It was the center of activities. They had Sunday school and church
services in that.
Church was pretty important in life then?
Well, yes. I think it was probably. I wouldn’t say it was the dominant part of life then, but it
was an important part of that community and our family. It probably pretty much shaped all
of our lives. I know at the time we started going to this church, my mother had been raised a
Catholic. She had pretty much tossed out the Catholic religion, and my dad was raised in the
Methodist church, and was rather inactive until we got involved in this.
Did you go to school there, in that area?
Yes. Tualatin Grade School and Sherwood High School. When I graduated from high school in
1942, the very first job I had was working on the Multnomah County Poor Farm, milking cows.
Dairy cows and cow barns at the Multnomah County Poor Farm in the early 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Troutdale
Historical Society.
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Aerial view of the Multnomah County Poor Farm (now McMenamins Edgefield) in the early 1940s. Photo courtesy
of the Troutdale Historical Society.
What was that?
It was an “old folks” home, the original old people’s home where people who didn’t have
anybody to support them were out on this farm. They had all categories of people there. They
had some who couldn’t work, some who could. Those who could work would get paid a little
bit for their work. They had a barber shop, shoe shops, and the whole works that these older
people ran.
This was at the tail end of the Depression, wasn’t it?
Yes, the tail end of the Depression.
And the beginning of World War II?
Yes, that’s what I said. I worked there a month, then quit to work in the shipyards. I was working on that poor farm for $65.00 a month plus room, board, and clothing.
How old were you then?
I was 17 then. I graduated from high school when I was 17. That’s why I wasn’t in the service.
How did the War affect you?
When the Second World War hit, everybody that had red blood was patriotic. We were attacked, and we felt it was our duty to defend our country. I joined the service as soon as I
could. I was going to join as soon as I turned 18, and my mother talked me into waiting until
Christmastime. Between my 18th birthday and Christmastime, they closed enlistments. I was
trying to get into the Air Force. They’d closed it. They had all they could take. They closed the
enlistments. I’d volunteered for induction, and went into the Army.
That was in 1943?
Yes, that’d be February of ‘43.
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Then what happened?
I was sent to the mechanized cavalry for basic training. They trained me for two years to be a
mechanic. I was in 13 camps in the United States. Yes—Texas, Arizona, California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, Kansas—that’s in 23 months. I was in a group they
called the Sight-Seeing Sixth Recon Squadron. Then I volunteered for duty overseas. I just
made a T-5 Corporal in Fort Riley, Kansas, but I never did want to stay in the States. They put
a list up on the bulletin board calling for volunteering for going overseas, and I think I was the
third name to go on it. The next day, Captain Pritchard came up. I was working on a jeep at
that time, had it all tore apart. I was lying down under the thing with my head under the dash,
if I remember right, when he came up and said, “Rowley, you still want to go overseas?” And
I said, “You bet.” And I looked up and it was the Captain, so, “Yes, sir.” He said, “You’ll leave
tomorrow.” I crawled out of there and started getting my stuff ready. Somebody else put the
jeep together, if anyone did.
And where did you go?
I went to the Pacific Theater, and spent almost a year in the Philippines. But the only real
interesting part is that when I got to the Philippines.... I’d volunteered to go overseas, and they
asked for a mechanic. They asked for a first sergeant, a clerk, and a tank commander. They took
five of us out of the battalion. That’s the same thing as about 1,200 men. They took five of us.
They figured they needed a mechanic bad. When I got to the Philippines, I ended up as a first
scout in the infantry.
Now MacArthur had left by then, had he not?
Well, they’d come back to the Philippines. This is on the return. They’d launched the Philippine
invasion in Leyte first, and I suppose we arrived on the scene three months later. There was still
fighting going on close by. They were driving across Luzon at that time; the one that I was put
in was the 41st infantry division. We made the initial landings on Mindanao, at Zamboanga.
Did you help liberate any of the prison camps?
No. We just landed in Zamboanga, and then spent a month on a little island called Basiland
Island. Had 200 American soldiers and 300 Japanese soldiers on 600 square miles. We did our
best to keep out of each other’s way. We tried to find them, and they tried not to find us. It
wasn’t too hard of fighting.
What’s your most memorable experience during that period in the Philippines?
Oh, there are a lot of them. I don’t know if there’s any one. I’ve had so many close calls and
about 30 days of combat. Two times, hand grenades we had tied up in the bush for booby traps
to warn us that somebody was trying to sneak up on us went off accidentally. One time, we put
just a little too much tension on the line. There were four of us, actually lying within ten feet of
it. It slipped, and the powder train started. We didn’t have any place to go. We just covered up,
and nobody got hurt.
Nobody hurt?
Nobody hurt. Then another time a little boy who was visiting me started home at dark and my
sergeant started to yell that the booby traps were out. I ran and caught him and went down the
trail with him, and I pointed out the wire. I’d just got to him and was setting him over the wire I
had straddled when his little dog came tearing down over the hill, hit the wire, and set the thing
off. I knocked him over and rolled on him, and I was about eight feet from it. It missed me.
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This was a little Filipino boy?
Yes, a little Filipino boy named Manuel.
He wasn’t hurt, then?
No. He wasn’t hurt, I wasn’t hurt. He couldn’t have been hurt, as I was lying on him. But I wasn’t
hurt either. Another time, during that time, we advanced one day and I was the first scout, and I
led the advance all day and we didn’t hit anything. We went up a little river valley or creek valley
with some steep hills on one side and caves dug into the hills. Nothing hid in any of them. We
crossed up onto a ridge that had trenches dug on it, and the trenches were empty. We camped
where those trenches were. The next morning, as we got ready to move out, the lieutenant sent
me and another kid up to guard the trail. The trail went on this grassy place, narrowed down by
two coconut trees, and then it opened up and came right together in brush, and the trail went
out. We went up to those two coconut trees, and one of us sat on each side and we looked up
the trail. We’d whisper back and forth to each other. We were guarding that trail. I’d led the day
before, but that day the second platoon moved out first, and I was first platoon. When their first
scout came up even with us, we stood up and walked back. We’d just cleared those guys, and the
ground was rolling like this. We’d just stepped into the trail, and we were walking back after our
equipment, and a machine gun opened up down that trail. The first scout had seen that guy. He
was lying at the other end of this grassy opening, and they’d almost stepped on him. He waved
the trail empty, and everybody fell out onto the trail, and machine guns fired down an empty
trail except for Allen and I. We went over that hill just far enough so that when he fired, he was
over our heads that far. We had our backs to him. We didn’t see him.
That was the second close call, then?
That was a close one. Another time we were setting out one of those booby traps and the
Japanese came out ahead of us, and one of the fellows that had been setting the traps had
handed his rifle to another person. When the firing started, he dropped that rifle in the trail.
We went down after that rifle three times. The third time we got it. We reached down into the
trail and pulled the rifle, and the rifle started to move. There was machine-gun fire all over the
place. There were four of us down there again, and when Abrahamson got ahold of the rifle, he
about half stood up to turn to leave, and he got hit in the arm. I come up out of there. I had a
bloody nose from there down to there, but it wasn’t because I got hit. It was because I slid on
the ground. But I went back down to that place the next day, when it was quiet. They weren’t
around anymore, and every little bush was nicked that far off the ground. You could see where
they’d fired across. We were down there. Wherever we camped—we were out in the jungle a
lot in some of the mahogany-timbered areas—would really fascinate me, being from western
Oregon. I used to take trips around through the jungle, sometimes by myself, or with one other
person. I could never camp and look at a green wall and not wonder if the enemy was going
to come out of that, how they were going to get there. If we were there more than one day, I’d
slip out through it, and make a trip around. Usually, I found that most jungles are a lot thinner
than western Oregon’s. We’ve got the thickest jungles in the world.
Is that right?
Yes. In the temperate Coast Range, where the moisture blows up onto the shore, you have
thicker underbrush than you do in the tropical jungles. The tropical jungle is thick on edge,
but, as soon as you go through the edge, well, then the canopy’s above you and there are vines
and things hanging down, and fairly thick, but you can step around through it and walk pretty
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easy. One time we were edged up into the trees along the river to get out of a sudden rain
storm. We were standing there and I noticed this branch hanging down in front of me. “That’s
an awful straight branch,” I thought, and I got to looking at it. It was a jungle viper that was
dead. Probably eight feet long, draped over a limb, its head hanging down over it, but square
head on the thing.
How do you feel about the Japanese themselves? What were your feelings about them as a race?
Oh, the Japanese. I thought they were a fine race from the start. I didn’t have anything against
the Japanese. I went to school with Japanese kids. I knew them first-hand before I went into
the service. As far as fighters in the jungle, they were suicidal, fight to the death. We didn’t give
any ground to them. Didn’t give them any chance to surrender, even. When we made our landing.... Talk about atrocities, I suppose. The Colonel told us we wouldn’t take any prisoners. One
of my high school/grade school buddies, Hifumi Okazaki, was drafted into the Army eventually, and he was in the Philippines as an interpreter. He told me that they lost more of their
personnel to Americans than they did to Japanese.
You mean the American Japanese in the American military did?
Yes, the American Japanese that were interpreters had to go out and try to talk the Japanese
into surrendering. Then they had to talk their way back in through the American lines, because
the Japanese would strip American GIs of their clothing, and infiltrate the lines in that way.
It was a real difficult assignment, and he said they lost several of their people from our own
soldiers shooting them.
What do you remember about the people around the western Oregon-Portland area as far as their
feelings toward the Japanese-Americans that were here?
I don’t remember any hard feelings. Almost all of us felt that, those people that I know had felt
like it was a real injustice to move them even. They’d been established on the land where they
were for at least one generation.
You saw them, and most of your friends saw them as loyal Americans?
Yes. I don’t know of even one incident that the people we knew weren’t loyal Americans.
There wasn’t a lot of hatred toward the Japanese after Pearl Harbor and the War?
Well, during the War, after Pearl Harbor, I think there could’ve been in other places, but, like
I say, not in our area where we grew up. There was hatred towards an enemy, but I don’t think
that I myself—I didn’t relate this to this enemy as being any Japanese person. I relate it as being a nation that was attacking us just like I’m basically half-German or have a lot of German
in me. Well, the Germans were the most atrocious. They committed the murders of all the millions of Jews without any qualms. A lot of them thought they were doing the world a service.
We’re part of that group, almost everyone.
Pick up now when you came back from the War. What year was it?
I came back in December of ‘45. I had come down with hepatitis in the Philippines right at
the end of the War. I was shipped home in a hospital ship. I had hookworms, and athlete’s
foot, and ringworms, and boils, and hepatitis. I was down to 130 pounds or something the first
time I was weighed after I started getting well.
Where did you come back to, to Oregon?
Yes. I came back through San Francisco, then up to the General Hospital at Fort Lewis for a
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time. I got a 60-day convalescence furlough. I came home and got married during that time.
Where did you meet your wife?
High school.
Had you been writing to her while you were in the military?
Yes, we’d been writing. I wrote to her all the time I was in the military. When I got out of high
school and went to work on that Poor Farm, I went to work with my wife’s brother. So we’d
been fairly close.
What was your wife’s maiden name?
Parker.
What’s her full name?
Marian Louise Parker. That fits with mine. I’m called Marvin Lavern, she’s Marian Louise.
She was born in Sutherlin, Oregon. When she was six months old, her parents went back to
Minnesota. They were from there originally. When she was eleven, they came back to Oregon.
What year was it that you got married then?
January 20, 1946.
And you were how old?
I was twenty-one.
What did you do then? Were you discharged from the military?
Yes, I was discharged a couple months later. Course, we’d already determined I was going to
the university to take forestry, and we started working toward that. We came down to Corvallis
in July of 1946, and bought a 50 by 100 lot on 28th and Fillmore Street—way out on the edge
of town. We started building a house. We were building it ourselves. Took me four years to do
it.
And you were a student all this time?
Yes. I registered at Oregon State that fall. I started in Forest Management. First term I was here
in Forest Management. After talking to kids that were here, course we were all veterans and
more mature than the normal college student now, first thing I found out was that almost all
Forest Management students went to work for the USDA Forest Service. I’d always thought
that was my goal until then. But the next thing I realized, to hear them talking, the ones that’d
been working for the USDA Forest Service sounded so much like the Army. That wasn’t for me.
Did your wife go to school?
No. She was going to work and put me through school, but, instead of that, she had kids.
That was work enough.
Yes.
You started in Oregon State in 1946?
Right.
And finished in what year?
1950.
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What did you do after you finished?
First, I finished that house. I had a few odds and ends to finish on that to sell it. I started working on that. Then, when I finished that, I was going to look for a job. Before I could finish the
house, I had two job offers. I graduated in Forest Engineering, and my first job offer, which
looked real good, was to manage a section and a half of young hemlock, cutover land that a forester had bought up near Bridal Veil, Oregon. I was toying with taking that offer when another
one came. They needed a timber cruiser, compass man for a timber cruiser, and work in the Forest Engineering Department for Umpqua Plywood Corporation in southern Oregon. I wanted
experience like that, so I took that job in June 1950. I worked for Umpqua Plywood for four
years in various capacities, as a timber cruiser for six months, as a field engineer for three years,
and as an area manager for a six-month period.
And, talking about people that influenced your life, I think the individual I worked for most of
that time was a fellow by the name of Bill James. He’d graduated from the University of Washington with Bill Davies in his class. In fact, that was how I made contact with the job. Bill James
was just a fine person to work with, and a real good person to work with in that he gave me my
head, let me do what I thought needed to be done, but also was critical of the job to the point
where he gave direction. He was a Forest Management graduate; he was keen on forest management. He was working as a forest engineer, but we used to spend a lot of time talking about
what we’d do different with the land from the management standpoint, if we could do it. At
that time, there was very little thinning going on in the Pacific Northwest—even at that time.
At that time, we used to talk thinning; we saw some going on. There was a guy doing it along
the highway, and we’d talk about whether or not he was doing it right.
In 1954, that job with Umpqua Plywood, I still had Bill James to work with some, but I also
had a general logging manager who’d come on the scene and been there a year and a half or
so. I was finding it more and more difficult to make my philosophy go along with his. I looked
around for another job. I almost went to work for Booth Kelly, a company in Springfield that
Georgia-Pacific bought out. I spent two days riding around with their land manager looking at
a job there, which would have been looking at trespasses, and property-line surveys, and working with the land manager in the management end. I thought I’d like that.
At the same time, my brother-in-law, the one I started work with on the Poor Farm, had
bought a farm out at Bellfountain in 1947. Between 1947 and 1954, he’d got involved in logging some timber off the old property and working for neighbors. He and I had run into possibilities of working together doing thinning, with the young timber in that area, and working
with the county agent. Stony Jackson was county agent then, and we ran into a job that looked
like it’d be a good starting place. Eventually, I decided to go to work as a contract logger rather
than work for somebody else, and I figured, if I did that, I could always go work for somebody
else. That job lasted 19 years.
You had your own business to operate?
Yes, we started our own business. We bought a used cat and a power saw, and hired our
trucking done to start with, loaded with an A-frame. We started in 1954. Then, 1956 we did
an experimental thinning for the…, actually it was cooperative between the School of Forestry
and the county agent. The Forestry School gave 40 acres up on the Spaulding Tract to the
Extension Service to use as a demonstration tract. We were hired to do that work for them
with the chance to put some of our philosophies to work and show them what we could do,
11
and they were giving us some guidelines. We did that job, and then we negotiated a sale on
a forest in 1957, I think it was, up on Oak Creek. From Oak Creek we logged ‘bout 300,000
feet, I think, off that sale, in the fall of 1957, early spring of 1958. Then over a two-year period
we bought, on a bid, every sale the University put up. They put up one a year, and nobody else
would bid on them.
Why was that?
Well, basically, we were doing a thinning, salvaging job, and the timber was so small that the
average logger then would just turn up their nose and say, “No, no, we can’t make it on that.”
Our philosophy of management and cutting and the type of work that we did just fit it, so we
bought several of these sales along about that time. In 1959, we were able to negotiate contracts with the University where they would sell the logs, and we would do the logging for
them. When we got this negotiated contract, we’d negotiated for two years at a time, and it
freed the University from being tied up to managing this. At that time, we started a general
cleanup, thinning program. We started at the north edge of the forest and moved south across
the forest.
By the forest, you mean McDonald Forest?
McDonald Forest, yes. We’re talking about university forests. So from 1959 to 1973, this was
basically it. I was in on the management of the university forests. Bill Davies was a forest manager and he set policies for us. We’d decide the area we were going to work in, set the guidelines, and go out and do the work. That work included building the roads, developing access,
marking the timber, and merchandising it, selling it.
So, when did you become the manager of the forest?
July 1 of 1973. When Bill reached retirement age, they decided that probably they were going
to have a problem replacing that position with all the duties he was carrying out, because he was
head of a department plus the forest manager. I was, up to that time, doing a lot of his management work by just conferring with him. It looked like, maybe new personnel was needed....
Even though you weren’t officially connected with the school?
Yes.
You were an independent contracting . . .?
Yes. I wasn’t on the staff. I was contracted to do certain types of work, and it’d be spelled out
just how we’d do it, so in a sense I was managing on the contract. And, although it’s similar to
the contract we operate under today, we’ve modified that contract some for today’s situations.
I’d like to get some more of that in our next interview. Let me switch now, a little bit, to a little more
philosophical vein. What has been the biggest influence in your life?
I think family has been a big influence, and these individuals that were working in the forest
industry, and my mother’s brother, Larry Gangle, was a graduate forester. He had a big influence
on that. Of course, I think, as I got out into the industry, I liked the outdoors. Maybe it’s hard
to tell just what develops interest, but, all through my life, it’d developed to the outdoor type of
thing. But it also developed into managing, and we had experience growing crops, and growing
the trees, and seeing them respond to treatments has continued to add to the philosophy.
So, from your youngest days, you had an interest in growing things, in forestry in general?
Well, yes. In growing things. When I was a kid we used to go to the Mount Jefferson
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Wilderness Area every summer—from the time I was 12 years on. We spent two weeks up
there one time, just by ourselves, the family.
Packed in? Or how did you get in there?
Oh, yes. Packed in. We each took a pack in. We packed in several years. Those days you didn’t
even have sleeping bags, you just rolled a bundle of blankets up in a quilt, and used a gunnysack
for a pack, sometimes. I think we carried in there one time with..., I told my mother I had 13
rolls of bread and a roll of liverwurst. I got so tired of eating liver, I never ate it for several years.
How has life changed since you were a kid? In general, is it very different, in your perception?
Well, yes, it is. I think it probably depends where we live, but the life in general is more urban.
That’s the biggest thing. I think another thing that I find is just meeting people. I’m out-going,
and I don’t have any trouble meeting them. But, if you’re a little conservative or introverted,
you could live all your life and not meet your neighbors now. Before, that was impossible. Yet,
I wouldn’t say we got along any better then than now, because we probably had our spats and
feuds then.
Do you think values are any different now from when you were growing up?
Oh, yes. There are tremendously different values. I know the values that our kids have.... We
counted everything we had that’s been rather dear, and didn’t run off and spend money just on
the spur of the moment. Where our kids came along and think nothing..., they think when
they got married, for instance, if they didn’t buy a home that was worth $50,000 or something
like that, something was wrong—I mean compared to today’s prices, they thought the world
owed them a living.... And one of the things I think I’m really upset about is land-use planning or the general philosophy of people today in the general area of what should be required
and what shouldn’t be. I have a lot of sympathy for the hippie-type person that moved out on
the head of Marys River, for instance, and built the house around himself. Because I think we
should have that right.
Do you think there’s any loss of personal freedom?
I know there’s been a loss of personal freedom. I think I’ve got a 100-acre farm out there, and
that I should be able to live in a cabin if I want to on that. And it shouldn’t be anybody else’s
business.
How are you limited?
Well, now I have to get a building permit to build a house, which I can see. But I can’t move
into that house until they certify it finished.
Do you think there’s too much government regulation there?
Oh, too much, way too much. They regulate.... And the other thing, of course, on this landuse planning business, I think I’m trying to look at it from an unselfish viewpoint and I see
population coming, we haven’t reached zero population growth. Probably in Oregon we’ve
been gaining people, and we’re going to gain a lot more before it starts down. So, what do
we have? We have a bunch of selfish people living in the city here, or living around the thing,
and they say, “We’ve got it just the way we want it now, we don’t want anybody to ever change
it.” They’re saying, “You’re going to ruin our environment, if you break these pieces up into
five-acre tracts.” Or, “You have got to keep them 40 acres.” So what’d they do? They ruin their
environment by breaking them into 40-acre tracts. The lawyer, the doctor, the affluent person
13
that can afford it goes out and buys his 40 acres, and builds his house on it, and promptly
locks it up so it’s not used in production anymore unless he wants to, and he doesn’t have to,
because he pays taxes. And they say that’s protecting our environment. Well, it really isn’t. It’s
not giving the guy that was born in a ghetto-type of a situation, and we could call a ghetto
an apartment complex down here, oh, on Highland Way, a guy that’s living in one of those
apartments that wants out of it.... He can’t get out of it, unless he gets to be affluent.
Have you been involved in politics at all?
Yes, a little bit.
In what way?
Well, I was on the Philomath School Board for 14 years. And I worked actively in the State
Representative campaign the last two legislative sessions, trying to defeat Bob Marx. Felt like he
was doing us a disservice. And, of course, in this same line, in the line of private forestry, I think
the State of Oregon is on a direction that has discouraged forestry for small woodland owners.
And we’re trying to, we’ve been politically trying to change that. I think this legislature we, if we
get through the small woodland option bill that state forestry and the small woodland group
have worked on, we’ll probably make the biggest headway since 1900 as far as small woodland
owners…. Up to this time, they can’t tell me that they’re encouraging me to grow trees. Only
thing I’ve heard is, Bob Straub has stood up and said, “I am going to grow trees.” But he hasn’t
done anything about making it really attractive. I’m a small woodland owner, and I’m growing
trees because I’m a forester, not because it looks smart to me.
How do you feel about your life and career? Did you meet your expectations, whatever those were?
Oh, yes. I’m not sure I had expectations to start with. Along in this line of values and things,
my expectations—probably basically I feel satisfied if I’m serving. We can reminisce about
missing the boat and getting rich and things like that, but that really isn’t the important thing
to me. One year when I was logging during our big-time logging time, I guess we’d say, I had
50 men working for me. I grossed $1,200,000, and, of course, I netted $15,000 that year, personally. That wasn’t a big deal. But, if you want to say that financing and the potential was there
for making a big killing, things happen right. Or, if you make the right decisions, and there’s
a lot of excitement in that…, but that really doesn’t mean as much to me as just seeing a good
job done.
What do you want for your kids?
Well, for my kids…. First of all, we wanted a good education for them, as good as they were
capable of doing. I didn’t want to push them beyond their capacity.
How many kids do you have?
Four.
What are their ages?
Oh, 31, 29, 25, 21. Something like that. I know Rhonda just turned 21, but I’m not sure of the rest.
So, one thing you wanted for them was a good education?
Yes, I wanted them to have the freedom to do what they wanted to do. We’ve never been one
to tell our children what to do. I had some ideas what my parents wanted me to do, but we
14
wanted our kids to have a good education, and then we’d given the best. Whatever they decided they wanted to do, we wanted them to put their best into it. I think they’ve all been doing
pretty good on that.
What are your goals for the future?
You know, I don’t know. I would like to go on as forest manager. I’d like to get my forest-management position into the place where it was down on paper, and I’d like to see an understudy
as an assistant for me. In case I wanted to move on to a different job, I could leave him with a
job that he’d already know, know the job enough so that he could really keep McDonald Forest and Dunn Forest productive as far as a university forest…. The experiments, the research
that’s being carried out on it, and the instructional uses would be of high caliber. Right now, if
I wanted to leave, I would leave them in a real bind. If they got the right person to follow me,
he could pick that up after a time.
Besides your goals for the school forests, are there any other personal goals you have for the future?
Well, I’d say, one of the things I have in the back of my mind is, if I were to leave the University right now, it would probably be to go into some type of work that would be maybe in an
undeveloped country. Some type of sideline missionary work that would be social improvement alongside some of the other work being done.
15
PART II - January 31, 1979
[Interview conducted by Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee at Peavy Hall, Oregon State University.]
Tell us about when you first came to Oregon State University and what you remember from that period.
Okay. I came to Oregon State in 1946, fall of 1946. Of course, that was the year all the veterans hit the campus, and there was a large influx of students. I guess a more mature student
than the normal college student—the average age was more like 22 or 23, rather than 18 or
19 starting. I think this group of veterans had quite an influence on the campus. Of course,
the School of Forestry at that time was, it seems like maybe 400, 350 students. The returning
veterans were the bulk of the students.
Why did so many veterans enter the School of Forestry? Was that unusual?
Well, they entered all the schools, but, of course, the GI Bill of World War II was the main
reason most of them could come all at once. It enabled us to pick up an education, where, like
I say, immediately before the Second World War the money was hard to come by and students
working their way through college would probably take five, six, seven years to get through.
And with the GI Bill, they paid tuition, paid a monthly amount for the time we were in
school.
What were the reasons why you chose OSU and the School of Forestry?
The reason I chose Oregon State University was family. My uncle, my mother’s brother, had
graduated from Oregon State School of Forestry, and I guess he was probably my hero up to
the time I went into the service anyway. That’s all I had in mind was, when I went to school,
if I went to college, I was going to Oregon State and I was going to take forestry. And, like I
say, the School then had just three departments, Forest Management, Forest Engineering, and
Forest Products in a smaller building—quite a different set of curriculum than we have now.
Who was Dean then? Was that Paul Dunn?
Paul Dunn was Dean, yes. I think he had taken over during the war years from [Earl] Mason.
Dean Dunn was in a rebuilding cycle. I think the School had lost its accreditation for a couple
of years right there at the start of the Second World War.
Accreditation with what?
With the SAF, the Society of American Foresters.
Why was that?
I’m not sure whether it was due to facilities or faculty, I’m not up on that. I know they lost accreditation, or at least it was in question, and Paul Dunn was the one who put it back together
and started building a strong program again.
How did he do that? What things did he do?
Well, I think the main thing he did.... He had contacts. He brought some good, strong personnel in, talked them into coming to the University and teaching when financially it was a real
setback to work for the University. I think, during my own time, Harry Patterson was the head
16
of the Forest Engineering Department. I think maybe I mentioned that last time, but I had
forestry in mind, and I’d also thought of working with the Forest Service, but after three years
in the Army, and then coming onto the campus and talking to other students who worked for
the Forest Service, what they did and how they did it, I thought, “That sounds like the Army,
and I don’t want that.” I was fed up with military, and so I switched to Forest Engineering,
because that looked like that was private industry, and I could make my own way.
What were these returning vets like, what kind of students were they?
Well, they were good students, although there were a lot of students that showed up at that
time that weren’t college-caliber. Because they had the GI Bill, they thought it was their doorway to education. Like I say, I know that a lot of them, in the first few months, had dropped
out; we didn’t have the counseling services that are available now. They would’ve been better off
in a vocational educational system, or maybe an apprenticeship right on a job would have been
better for them.
What percentage of them actually finished? Do you have any idea?
No, I don’t. But, of those, after the first year, I think a high percentage of them finished. I don’t
know of any, or remember any, of my near friends that dropped out after the first year.
Were there a lot of good jobs waiting for graduates of this program?
Oh, yes.
Were people optimistic about that?
Yes, of course—in Forest Engineering, I don’t remember Management. I think during that
time most of the Management students and all the Forest Products students found jobs, and,
of course, in Forest Engineering there was more than one job available for every graduate.
How many students were in Forest Engineering?
Oh, in my class there were about 20.
Twenty?
And, like I say, when I graduated, I’d been building a house during my school days, and I just
had little odds and ends to finish up on it before I could sell it, so I didn’t take a job; I didn’t
even look for a job. I figured the month of June I would finish my house, and before the first
week of June I had two job opportunities where they wanted somebody immediately.
When was this, about 1950?
Yes, in 1950. And I took one of those and sold the house unfinished.
What job did you take?
Oh, one with Umpqua Plywood Corporation in southern Oregon.
Let’s back up a minute. I want to dwell a little bit more on the University before we skip over that.
Who was president of the University when you came?
Well, Dean [George] Peavy was president.
And also Dean at the same time?
No, he had been. I think he moved into the presidency in 1939 or 1940. And he retired in
1946, I think, so he was retiring about that time.
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What kind of man was he? What do you recollect of him?
Oh, he was a…. I’d say he wasn’t too tall a person or anything. He was short for a man, probably 5’6” or something like that, 5’7”. But he had a voice on him when he spoke that commanded attention.
He was authoritative?
Yes, well, he was just..., you listened. He spoke at a couple of our Fernhopper Banquets, and I
met him a few times during my college days, and, like I say, he always knew he was a man, he
knew what he wanted done, he knew how to get it done, and people were willing to follow him.
He was a good leader?
He was a good leader, an excellent leader. I think that’s why he built the Forestry School. In
those days, you could feel his character in it. A lot of the professors came up under him. [Walter] McCulloch was the head of the Forest Management Department, and his character was
similar to Peavy’s—rather strong.
Very moral men?
Yes, they were. And rather rigid sometimes, to the point of cutting people off. I don’t know
about Dean Peavy, but I know McCulloch. I knew of some incidents where people left forestry rather than stay around because they did something he didn’t approve of, and he let them
know in terms that didn’t leave any alternatives.
Why don’t you go ahead and talk about McCulloch a little bit. What kind of man was he?
I think he was born in Canada, British Columbia, Vancouver Island. Studied at UBC, then
came down to the States and furthered his education. He was a strong leader. I don’t think he
was as strong as Dean Peavy. Real good educator.
He was a good storyteller then?
Yes. I wasn’t sure whether that story was fact or fiction, but I think it was fact. I think he, like
you hear people tell stories, and they get mixed up about times.... Since I’ve got that age, I can
get events mixed up, too. But he was a good storyteller, and he got his point across. Like he
wrote this Woods Words.
The book called Woods Words?
Yes, the book. Terminology of words used in forestry and in the woods. And another book he
wrote then had to do with, oh, getting along on the job; I can’t remember the name.
It’s put out by the Extension Service, as I recall.
Yes. And it is pretty well done.
Marvin, how did he feel about women in forestry?
I don’t know. We didn’t have any women in forestry then. They had a woman who graduated
in forestry back in the late 1930s, who, from what I’ve heard, did a good job, and went out and
worked in the industry.
Isn’t she the one that married another forester?
Yes, I think so. I don’t know their names. I just remember hearing about it. Then I think, during our years, I don’t remember one girl in forestry.
18
Why do you think that is?
Well, I think it was traditional for one thing. I don’t think, back in those days…. I don’t think
women thought of it as being a field that they could work in even. And so they just didn’t. And
the only ones who did were considered tomboys—probably they still are?
What else do you remember about McCulloch? Was he a good administrator?
Yes, like I say, a good administrator. I think, some of the things that refer to the forest, I mean
in the background.... I know about the forest at that time. Harry Nettleton was the forest
manager. I think he was appointed forest manager about 1948 or something like that, and his
background had been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and some public agencies, mainly in
a protective role. As he came on as forest manager, he looked at the forest as being unroaded,
and needed a lot of money spent on it, and those days the budget was tight, and they didn’t
have money to spend, and I can just remember something about Dean McCulloch telling
Nettleton that he couldn’t spend that money. So, he was looking at things pretty closely. Of
course, they had to then, too.
How would the years be structured for the forest managers the School has had then? Was Harry
Nettleton the first one?
Yes, Harry Nettleton was the first forest manager. Full-time.
What would have been his years as full-time manager?
I think from 1948 to 1958. I think Bill Davies took over as a part-time manager in 1959 until
1973.
Was Davies department head at that time?
Yes, he was department head of the Forest Engineering Department.
Why did they stop having a full-time manager and go to a part-time individual like Bill Davies, who
had other responsibilities as well?
Well, I think you’d have to ask McCulloch that. I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that this
probably had something to do with my being on the scene. In this contract we negotiated, that
they felt like, as contractors, we could do part of that work rather than need a full-time manager. The contractor could be doing some of that.
I’ve been told you were really managing the forest even before you worked for the School of
Forestry, because of all the work you were doing as an independent contractor.
Yes, we did most. Like I say, what Bill Davies did was set policy and guidelines, and pick
areas to work in. And, as we worked through an area, I’d look at the area, come in and
communicate with him what I’d seen and what I felt ought to be done, and we’d agree
on what to do, and I’d go back and do it. But I’d usually do that.... Under a continuous
contract, we’d start in one area and move across. I used to look out ahead, and try to be a
year ahead if I could on potential things that should be done. So we had a good working
relationship that way.
Did Harry Nettleton not take a very active role in managing the forest? What was his
philosophy?
No, he wasn’t very active. But, like I say, I think we see a transition between no management, just anybody going out and doing their own thing on the forest, and then trying to
19
bring it into a managed state. Under Harry Nettleton, they sold at least three fairly large
timber sales. The philosophy of management that came from what they did with the government agencies and put up timber sale type of thing, drew up a contract, put it up for bid, and
this got them about the same results as you get on a government timber sale. The sale made,
with a contract and whoever logged it, was picked up by the purchaser, and the work was done
within the scope of the contract. But they had leeway, and the manager wasn’t able to dictate a
whole lot under it. It wasn’t drawn up any closer than the contracts were at that time. And, if
you go back in the early 1950s, you know, in the Forest Service, there was no engineering on
a road. The engineering that was done..., you took an abney and ran a grade. You blazed the
centerline, and then the timber cutters came through and fell right-of-way. All they had was
a blazed centerline. That was it. They just told you in the contract to fall right-of-way about so
wide, and there were no ribbons on each side or anything.
No real road construction, then?
Well, there was road construction, but it was done by the catskinner and the road construction foreman, and it just came down to—how competent was he? And there were
some excellent roads built during that time, but there were some lousy ones, too. And the
government agency didn’t have any control on it. Well, that’s the same thing on the forests
there in those earlier days. And, as they got into the management, then they saw other
things they needed to do. Especially the university forest that was going to be experimental wanted more flexibility. I guess maybe we get away from the school a little bit now, and
go to the forest.
Yes. Well, let me ask you a couple of other things. First of all, I’m confused. I thought that in 1950
you took a job with a plywood firm, and now you’re talking about managing the forest. What happened in between?
Yes. Well, I worked four years down there for Umpqua Plywood, and then I quit and went to
work as a logging contractor with tree-farm thinning as our specialty.
Where, in this area?
Yes, back up in this area. We started that in 1954, and in 1956 we started doing some work for
the University. Do you have more to get before that?
Yes, I was wondering who effectively managed the forest before Harry Nettleton. Who started in
1948? They started acquiring it, as I recall, in the middle ‘20s from Mary McDonald.
Yes, they started buying this about 1924, ‘25. I think they built the first Forestry Club Cabin
in 1925, so that probably was purchased before then. They started with the Arboretum area…,
and they gradually purchased all of McDonald Forest. And the philosophy behind the purchasing was that they wanted a school forest. The money was there, but they didn’t want to go
right out and buy one, so the people decided that, yes, they’re going to buy it, and hold them
up for money, so it was going to cost them. They bought it as it was available and at a market
price, rather than an inflated price.
Who did this?
Dean Peavy, and T. J. Starker was one of the professors who helped purchase the earlier lands.
But most of it was Dean Peavy and the different…, I’m not sure which professors then were
given the authority to go ahead, but I think they worked as a committee. I think they had a
McDonald Forest Committee that said, “Yes, buy this. Don’t buy that.”
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In retrospect, they were very wise in the way they handled that, weren’t they?
I think they did a good job of it.
Bought it at good market prices, and did it slowly enough that no one was able to extract a huge price
out of the University.
Yes, they did it, as I say—as it became available. Actually, they called it junk land when I was
here. Like I said, back when I came onto the scene in 1946, the professors were inclined to call
this, McDonald Forest, the land that nobody else wanted, and it’s just junk, you know? A lot
of it was cut over and then sold to them. And, in my earliest recollection of riding or going out
there, we had the open Army trucks with canvas backs on them that we used to go to class in.
What year would that have been?
1946–’50.
It was bought specifically for the classes and the School of Forestry?
It was bought specifically for a university forest. And that was for research and education purposes.
Marvin, do you know where classes were taken before they acquired this land?
Oh, yes. Avery’s Park, Avery’s Woodlot. They used to go to Marys Peak. Sometimes they’d
take the train, I think. They’d go on field trips up to Columbia County. They’d go up to logging
camps and stay a week or two, around Oregon. I know I’ve read different incidents about them
going on these “excursions,” they called them, either in an old truck or on a train. Ride up and
take the logging train, catch it into camp.
Did Peavy go with the students? And professors?
Oh, yes. I think all of them went. Only, I think, when they left campus back in some of the early
days, they left en masse. They just vacated the Forestry School for a week and everybody left.
Did students look forward to that, from what you’ve heard? Did they like that experience?
Oh, yes. I think that was vital to them, at those times. It took the place of some of the things
that we can now do right here on the forest. In those days, if they didn’t do that, they had all
book-learning, and nothing on the ground.
So, the education in that period was very applied?
Yes, very applied.
Go out and do it?
If you couldn’t do it.... And that’s one of the reasons that Oregon State University built up
such a credibility with the industries, because the industries knew that a forester, when he got
out of here, would be able to do the job for them. And you’d see some of those earlier foresters
took leadership in the forest industry, and the world even, as they went from here.
Are there some of your classmates that have made names for themselves in the field of forestry or a
related field?
Oh, yes. Fellows I studied with. Of course, Rex Ressler’s one. He was a freshman when I was a
senior, but we worked on the cabin together, and he was number two in the Forest Service until he retired this year. A lot of my friends have been supervisors in the national forests. Frank
Price. Dick Worthington is Region Six, head of Region Six now. He was a classmate. Frank
Price is head of the national forest in Alaska. Those before that time even were real strong
21
people. One of the memorable ones I guess is Bob Aufderheide. You have the Aufderheide
Award around the School. He died of leukemia.
What did he do that was notable?
In the late ‘50s he was the, the head of the Umpqua National Forest, and then the Willamette
National Forest when he got sick. He was just a good, strong personality, and a likable fellow.
An incident about him, you know, when I was working at Umpqua Plywood, an engineering
crew took care of the slash burning pretty much. When we were slash burning, Bob Aufderheide would always show up, not sometimes, but just always show up, because he liked to burn
slash. And here’s the head of the national forests. He’d grab a bucket of planer shavings, and
we’d bring barrels of planer shavings soaked in diesel oil, and we’d fill a bucket full of those and
have a little scoop.... We’d scoop them with, with a tin can on the end of a stick, and we’d light
that and sprinkle a little here and there, and start our fires. Bob would be out there and he’d
grab one of those, and he’d work for, all night long, usually lighting at night time.
And he was a classmate of yours, is that right?
No, he was earlier. He was late ‘30s, I think. I’m not sure just when he got out. Probably ‘36,
‘37— somewhere like that.
When did he die?
I’m not sure. I think probably sometime along about ‘57 or ‘58.
Is that when they set up the award?
Yes, they set that up right after that as a memorial to Bob.
Getting back to 1946 when you entered the School of Forestry, who were some of the professors that
were here when you came, or at least ones that stand out as exceptional?
Well, Harry Patterson was head of the Forest Engineering Department, and Ralph DeMoisy
was a Forest Engineering professor, and Bill Davies was the other one. That was the
department.
Is that Forest Products?
No, that was Forest Engineering. In Forest Products we had Jack Grantham, Head of the
Department.
And McCulloch was head of Forest Management?
Yes, McCulloch was head of Forest Management. Dan Robinson was here then. He was probably the only one that was here then.
What about Bob Wilson?
Oh, no. He’s a johnny-come-lately. He’s only been here 25 years or so. Let’s see, who else.... I
gave you Ralph DeMoisy....
Was T. J. Starker here still?
Jim Snodgrass was Forest Products professor. Young fellow at that time.
T. J. Starker had already left by then?
He’d already left, yes. I’m trying to think. Bob Kenniston was here then. Casey Randall came
before I left school, and Bob Kenniston and Casey Randall are both dead. They died on the
job, so to speak. Let’s see....
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Which of these people stand out in your mind as affecting your life?
Oh, all of them did some. Bill Davies.... Like I say, most of my Forest Engineering courses
after freshman year came from Bill. And then junior and senior year were Harry Patterson. Of
course, Harry came here in 1922, I think, some time like that. He’s a civil engineer that had
a railroad background and, even at that time, when I was a senior in Forest Engineering, we
learned how to build trestles, locate railroads, put in frog angles, spurs, curves, spirals.
Why did you go into Forest Engineering rather than Forest Management?
Like I say, that was back when I entered. I was looking at Forest Management, but it sounded
like that was like the Army and most of them worked for the government, and the government was Army, so I went to Forest Engineering. Dean McCulloch followed through on what
Dunn had started. They had the same philosophy, and maybe, if anything, McCulloch was
stronger in realigning. I think one thing that, if McCulloch saw something that didn’t fit, he
cut it. I mean, there was no bones about it, and if it hurt somebody it hurt, and I think he did it
because he wanted a strong department. The personality didn’t matter.
McCulloch had what he called his student personnel program, that he developed. Now I guess Bill
Wheeler heads that up as head advisor. Was that program active when you were a student here? Did
they counsel you a lot, try to get you jobs and work with you individually?
Well, we had counselors, all right. Our advisors. With others they may have, but I don’t
remember them influencing me; I don’t remember even relying on it. I think again, that period
from 1946 to 1950, with the veterans that were here, we were mature enough to make our own
decisions—even if they were wrong decisions. We didn’t go ask someone. I think something in
point, that points out the philosophy of the returning group, was that before that time all the
freshmen wore those little beanies.
A freshman beanie?
A freshman beanie. And they were hazed by the sophomores in this initiation process that was
traditional. Well, we came on the scene, and.... There were a few in the fraternities that tried to haze
the freshmen and tell them to step out of the way, and stuff, and it ended just about the first day.
Veterans just wouldn’t take that?
Veterans said, “You and who else is going to make me do that?” They’d say, “Oh, oh. I didn’t
mean anything then.”
How do you think the professors adapted to this new freshman population?
Oh, I think they liked it. I think this group of veterans again had a tremendous influence on
the University life as a whole. The professors up to that time had been used to taking the high
school students and kind of developing them, and here they had a mature group that they
worked with that were interested in learning, and they stopped coddling a bunch of them. Like
I say, when I started at the University you could start at Math 10, which was a grade-schoollevel math, and you got college credit for it. Well, now, if you can’t start in calculus.... This has
been kind of an evolution over the years, but they cut out that type of thing, of just trying to
get them ready to go. And I think that veteran population had something to do with it.
I’ve heard of a tradition of wearing a red tie on a certain day to identify yourself as a forester. Can you
tell me anything about that?
Yes. When I came that red tie day was a must. I mean, everybody wore a red tie.
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What day of the week was that?
That was Wednesday. Every Wednesday every forester wore a red tie. Dean Peavy started that
way back in antiquity somewhere.
What was the idea then?
Oh, just to set them apart—an esprit de corps type of thing, I suppose. Just to give something
to identify them with.
Why a red tie?
I don’t know whether that’s all that Dean Peavy had, or if he liked red, or if there was somebody else who’d suggested it. They used to make fun of the red forester. Say, “Hey, your tongue’s
hanging out,” things like that. But they all wore a red tie anyway.
There was a real sense of identification in the School of Forestry then and on the campus?
Yes. The Forestry Club, for instance, in those days consisted of 100 percent of the student body
and all the faculty. You went to a Forestry Club meeting, and, well, they were all there.
How many people would that have been altogether when you were a student?
Three, four hundred people.
Everybody participated?
Yes. I mean, not everybody.... Sometimes you couldn’t be there, but the bulk of the people were
there at the meeting. And the meeting was pretty professionally run. It consisted of a short
business meeting, a singing time, and a speaker, some current issue, and refreshments. They put
out the High Lead, and the Annual Cruise, and had different projects they worked on.
What were some of the activities of the Forestry Club when you were a student?
I guess the biggest one was the building of the Forestry Club Cabin. Of course, I think back
to that time and this, when I came here and what the forest was like. It had the old cabin—
Forestry Club Cabin was a traditional cabin, logs horizontal, big fireplace on either end of a
rectangular building.
Now, you’re describing the cabin that burned down?
Yes. A dirt floor. It was built by students back in the early days.
What year, do you remember?
I think 1925. I met the fellow that was foreman of that project in the 1950s. They had a school
sawmill that was put in about 1946 or 1947, way up on Oak Creek, that the Forest Products
people worked in some. They had an old D-6 cat that the Forest Engineering group logged
with once in a while for the sawmill. But the road system was basically what was left from the
old logging, or the CCCs had built. That was another part of the forest, during the 1930s, during the Depression, the CCC had built a camp at Peavy Arboretum. I’ve got a map up in the
office that shows 40 buildings in the Arboretum area. There was a battalion of men stationed
there who worked in 10 or 12 locations all around this general area, all the way out to Siletz
and Valsetz area, and down toward Newport. They constructed the lookouts, and built trails
and fisheries, and, of course, during that time they built the main road across the ridge, from
Peavy Arboretum over across to Lewisburg Saddle and on over to Oak Creek. That was the
main road through the forest up to that time.
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Is that Patterson Road?
That’s Nettleton Road—Nettleton Road, Patterson Road, Schreiner Road—there are three
different names on it.
Let’s go back to the Forestry Cabin. When did the first one burn down?
Oh, it burned down in February of 1949.
And then what happened?
We got a committee together to investigate rebuilding the cabin.
Who did this?
The Forestry Club. And I was on that committee. At that time, I was taking Architecture
classes as electives, and that term I think I was in a class—no, I probably finished that class—
but I’d had architectural courses, and I was building a house, and it just evolved that we drew
up a series of plans. The committee worked on ideas and presented them to the Forestry
Club. And, in conjunction with the Forestry Club and the Physical Plant here on the campus,
working together, we picked up a plan and we got $6,050 from an insurance fund to go into
rebuilding. That was in the spring of 1949. When we came back that fall, fall of 1949, I was
appointed the construction foreman, and we started building it.
You were a student at that time?
Yes, I was a senior that year.
Marvin Rowley and Harry Nettleton at the fireplace in the reconstructed Forestry Club Cabin.
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Who appointed you?
The Forestry Club and the dean, and the faculty advisor, Jack Grantham, the Forest Products
professor, was the one I reported to.
Were you paid to do this, or did you get academic credit?
Yes, I got paid, a $1 an hour, for working on that. Up to that fall, I just did it free, gratis,
like everyone did. But then, when we came back, well, some of the work was donated,
some of it was student labor.
How long a period did it take to actually construct the cabin?
We had the thing up in almost the present form—the inside wasn’t finished off, it was fairly
rough, but the windows were in, the doors were in, and the fireplace and all the walls up, and
the roof was on, by May 1950.
And you designed it?
Yes, I designed it. I designed it with a committee, but we drew up different sketches.
What happened? Did vandals burn down the first cabin?
No. They had a fraternity party there the night before. And the next morning it was burned
down. They figured there was probably a crack in one of the fireplaces and a spark got up in
one of the logs, and they didn’t know. Of course, that’s been the thing that’s shaped our policy
since then. The policy’s been that we don’t let fraternities, sororities, use the cabin. It’s open
for forestry, the forestry students and related type of activities. And this has been in the background in deciding no more outside groups use it.
Was it built on the same site as the first one?
Yes, it’s built right on the same site, only it faces the opposite direction. The other one, the
ridge ran east and west, and this one the ridge runs north and south. If you look closely on the
floor as you go in, oh, probably 10 feet inside the main room, there’s a crack in the concrete, a
slight crack runs east and west. That was the old foundation. The other old building foundation
is underneath that crack. Had a slight settling and it cracked over that.
You poured the new foundation right over the other one?
Yes, we poured the new floor, we put a floor in this one, but we left the old foundation. We
didn’t beat it all out. We just broke it down and in that place we were just about four inches
above it, so we just left it there.
Why was that spot chosen?
Well, that’s a good spot. I don’t know why the first group chose it, but it’s pretty close to water.
And it’s on that little flat place up there in the trees, and of course they logged—the logs were
close. The first one was built off the logs right off the hillside there. If you ever see a picture
of the first cabin, it’s sitting on the edge of a clearcut. Back up where the restrooms, toilets are
now—that was all logged, completely denuded.
While we’re talking about cabins, let’s talk a little bit about Peavy’s Cabin. Did you ever go there when
it was still standing?
Oh, yes. Spent several nights there. I don’t know just exactly when they built it, but it was built
by the alumni, and for the Dean. It was, like I say, a small cabin, probably 16 by 24 feet—
something like that. It had a kitchen area, and a bigger area with a porch on the east side over26
looking the valley. Evidently it was built as a retreat for the Dean. And I have an idea, I think
the thing it was used for more than anything else was probably a kind of seminar room away
from the campus, where you go out and spend the day discussing things without interruptions.
Did you get out there for that purpose occasionally?
Yes, I was out there a couple of times for that. And I was out there when I was logging; went
out there and stayed overnight a couple–three times. I took a bunch of Sunday school kids up
there one time, stayed all night, had our breakfast, and had an evangelist from the East. Name
was Al Paya. He was out here for a couple of weeks, and I took him up there with his kids. He
thought that was fantastic. He always wanted to be up on a mountain and watch the sun come
up.
What other groups or individuals have used that cabin, when it was still standing?
Alumni groups, I think. I think probably 95 percent of the use was faculty.
Now, did the Alumni build it personally, or was it contracted out?
I have no idea. I think they probably built it personally. I’m not sure.
And that was because they admired Peavy so much that they wanted to do this for him?
Yes. As I gather. And I’m not sure whether they just.... I have an idea there’s probably a variety.
Some of them worked on it, and some of them donated money. I think it was both ways.
Did Peavy use it quite a bit?
Well, if he used it, like I say, it was before my time. I never met Peavy up there. Of course,
again, he died I think before I got out of school. So, after 1950, he wasn’t there to use it, but
they sprinkled his ashes out on the slope outside the cabin.
Was that his request?
I think so. I have in my office yet a bronze plaque that was on the fireplace that was dedicated
to Dean Peavy. Vandals had stolen that plaque, started down the hill with it, and some way or
another, somebody either scared them, or they got tired of carrying it…. They threw it away.
And somebody found it, and turned it in to my office. We’re thinking of putting it back. I’m
going to try to put it back in the Forestry Club Cabin.
When did Peavy’s Cabin burn down?
It didn’t burn down. They tore it down in 1961.
Why did they do that?
It had dry rot, and it was getting in poor shape. And they didn’t feel like they wanted to
keep it up.
By “they” now, are we talking about McCulloch?
This would be McCulloch, yes. And Bill Davies. The other thing that kind of enters into this is
the Columbus Day Storm of 1962. Blew a big fir tree right across the foundation. If the cabin
had been there, it’d have been mashed flat by that big tree. So, either way, it’d have been down.
Were there a lot of problems with vandals and other illegal uses of the cabin?
Well, there were getting to be. When they tore it down, there were getting to be break-ins
rather consistently. That was before the TV facilities were up there. And there wasn’t anybody
around to watch it.
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Before what facilities?
The KOAC TV tower.
On Vineyard Mountain?
On Vineyard Mountain, see, and that cabin was right alongside of that.
What year were those facilities put in by the TV company?
I think they were put in [during] the late 1950s. . . . Probably about the time they tore [the
cabin] down or just before.
Why don’t we talk a little bit about those early days we skipped over about the CCC, Camp Adair, and
that period? Pre-World War II. You mentioned the CCC Camp. Besides building roads, constructing
Cronemiller Lake, and activities like that, what other kinds of things did they do?
They planted. Some of the forests are planted by the CCCs. And I say, I think the Oak Creek
guard station was constructed by the CCCs. Where the Oak Creek fisheries lab is now, they
had telephone lines. There used to be a couple ... in fact, the remnants are still there. Out on
the Jackson place, there are a couple of open-sided shelters. The CCCs built those, and not
very many people knew they were there after they built them even. I think they strung a
telephone line down through the Jackson place, and I’m not sure just what other types of work
they did do. During that same period of time, the students, the University students, did a lot of
work on the forest under government support programs that were similar to work-study now.
They had, what’d they call it...? The NRA Act.
The National Industrial Recovery Act, the NRA?
Yes. I think they had a work deal for the students, and they built most of the fences around the
forest. And I think part of the fences were done by the CCCs and part of them were done by
this student group. The students did a lot of wood cutting at that time, and thinning. I think at
that time the University was heated by wood.
In the ‘30s?
Yes, they had cord wood.
So, a lot of that wood for the heating came from McDonald Forest?
I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m not sure where it went, but I know they cut it. And I know where
they cut it because I’ve run into places, in some cases, where there was wood still piled there
that they’d cut, but didn’t get hauled out for some reason or another.
How were the CCC boys considered by the Corvallis community? Have you ever heard anything about
that? Were they well received?
Oh, I don’t know. I think so. Like I say, all I know is about people that’ve been in the CCCs.
I think this group, a lot of these were easterners, came out here, like I say, the CCC was run
as a part of the Army. The Army, all their officers were Army officers, and it was built up, the
structure was Army—battalions, companies, platoons.
Pretty tight discipline, then?
Yes, tight discipline. Court martials. Somebody that was out of order was called onto the carpet for it, put on extra duty. They were also learning a trade type of thing, a lot of them. They
were doing reclamation projects, and so it wasn’t typical Army as far as the work they did, but
as far as the organization, I think they had the calisthenics, the close-order drill, and this type
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of thing that you’d find in the Army. But that’s where it ended.
Were they allowed to come to town on leave on weekends or at night, or anything?
Oh, I think so. I don’t know how much or anything. Not nearly as much as now. The restricting thing then was money. I have an idea these kids got Army pay, which was $20.00 a month.
And in those days $20.00 was a fair amount, but it still didn’t leave you a lot. A lot of it went to
their parents at home, and they got $4.00 or $5.00 a month. I don’t think you’d find that they
were hitting the town and carousing around a lot.
Was the nursery established by then? The one Vern McDaniel came to direct?
Yes, I think that nursery was established about the same time as they started buying the forest.
In about 1926, the nursery was established. I’m not sure of that exact date, but have you interviewed Vern? I think he took over when that was a pretty rough piece of ground, and cleared
it up. In fact, the old stump-puller’s out there. I just dug it out of the brush, and am looking to
see if we could put it together in a demonstrable condition….
Recently you did this?
Yes, just over Christmas vacation.
And this was a stump-puller used....
For clearing the Arboretum off. It was a horse-powered stump-puller.
Is it in good enough condition to put back together?
Well, the wood’s all gone, all you’d have to do is put it back together that way. Probably I ought to
get ahold of Vern and find out just what kind of a platform they had it mounted on. I think it’s
mounted on a little sled, and they moved it with, had a tongue about six or eight inches in diameter, about 20–25 feet long, and the horses were tied to the end of that, and walked in a circle.
It was a pretty powerful little machine; it’s just strictly a mechanical advantage type of thing.
Something we skipped over a little bit was the acquisition of the Arboretum—the Arboretum Committee that was set up, that T. J. Starker was instrumental in acquisition. What do you know about that?
Well, I know just what I’ve read on the thing. They had a committee. I think the committee
consisted of students and faculty and alumni. As I would put it together from reading about it,
they worked together to get the Arboretum and to establish a school forest. I think the State
Forestry Department worked with them on this; I think that’s why we had the nursery there.
They were probably all some of the same personnel that were involved in it. Today, even, it’s
different. We have the Arboretum area, part of that, under a 100-year lease or a 20-year lease,
or something like this.
From whom?
From the State Forestry Department. They bought that. And some of those buildings out
there were State Forestry Department built. And we have a lease on them for $1 a year, or
something like that.
Are some of those buildings original? Are they like they were originally, or have they all been altered?
Oh, most of those up in the Arboretum area are like they were originally. They haven’t been altered.
Built by the CCC boys?
I have an idea they were built by the 3-C boys. Some of them may even have been built earlier
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than the 3-Cs, but I’m not sure. I don’t have any records on just the exact date they were built.
I am pretty sure that Vern McDaniel’s house, the one that Ivan Cutsforth lives in, was built by
the 3-Cs. It has typical shutters, woodcarving on it, the type of work that they did. Whether
all the other houses were done, it looked like that house down there alongside our office may
have been an earlier one, and the other constructed later.
Did you ever know anyone that had met Mrs. Mary McDonald?
No, no, I didn’t.
She didn’t really come up here that much?
No. I don’t know. I never met her, and don’t know anyone I’ve met that knew her. Dean Peavy,
and I suppose McCulloch, and T. J. Starker all would have known her, but I don’t have any
information about her.
Did you ever hear any comments that would give us an insight into her personality or what she was like?
No. Although the only thing, what I was reading in the papers, where it said that her husband
had made a pretty good sum of money and she wanted to further forestry. I don’t know any
more about it than that. I don’t think Oregon State University’s the only recipient of her money.
I think the University of California has the school forest from the same source, but I’m not sure.
I wonder if they had any children?
I don’t know. Probably not, or probably, if they did, at least they had enough that she could give
them money without shorting anybody.
Marvin, let’s talk for a minute about the earlier period before it was the school forest. What kind of
human occupation was there in the area—such as homesteading, grazing? What kind of things happened there?
Well, I think all types that we’d see are common to the Valley here. There are some portions
of donation land claims within the school area, and these are areas that were homesteaded or
settled before the Homestead Act, which, the Homestead Act was 1848, was it, or 1849?
Was later than that, wasn’t it? Was 1862, wasn’t it? The Donation Act was around 1850, as I recall.
Well, I think by 1852 they were taking up the area. It was surveyed and the Homestead Act
required them to take up surveyed areas, but I don’t remember any Donation Land Claims
that go beyond 1850 at all. I think most of them ended about 1848, and of course the
Donation Land Claim gives the settlers I think 640 acres, but he could lay it out any way he
wanted to. So that you see odd-shaped pieces or rectangular pieces or triangular pieces that fit
the landscape.
Included in the Valley?
Included in the Valley, and maybe the foothills around it. I find these up on Soap Creek Valley,
in the Soap Creek Valley. And right around Peavy Arboretum, over in the early era. On Berry
Creek, had one that fit up a valley there, odd shape.
What do you know about any of those early homesteaders? What names stand out to you?
Oh, I’d have to go read the thing. I could think of some.
What about Greenberry Smith?
Well, that doesn’t. I’ve looked at the map, and I know a lot of those names, but I’d have to
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read the map to recall them. Some of them, you look at them and you recognize the names as
early settlers that are prominent in the history of the area. The early homesteaders’ basic idea
was to clear the land, use it for agriculture. It wasn’t until later they found it was unfeasible to
use foothills for agriculture, although most of the foothill use was for grazing. Of course, this
brings out the point that McDonald Forest was basically an open oak forest at the time the
settlers came in here, not a Douglas-fir forest.
Even in the 1800s? It would have been an open oak forest then?
In 1850, it would have been an open oak forest.
The whole area?
Most of the area. I’d say probably 80 percent of it, not 100 percent. The bulk of our timber is
140 years old. The Indians evidently practiced an annual burning that kept it open, and the
only Douglas-fir was on north slopes, in shady areas that didn’t dry out enough to burn. There’s
only one stand in the whole area that puzzles me. It’s on an east slope, and for some reason it
didn’t burn, but on either side of it.... And then scattered along through these open oak forests
was old hooter-type of a Douglas-fir.
“Hooter-type” ?
Yes.
What is that?
That’s a grouse ladder. Now a hooter or a grouse ladder to a forester is a real limby tree. It’s
grown in the open, hasn’t pruned itself off. We call it a “hooter,” because the hoot owls can
roost in it. Or they call it a “grouse ladder,” because you can start at the bottom and bounce up
all the limbs. Two logger terms.
Where is that strip of old growth of the Douglas-fir?
On the east slope that I was telling you about? Well, it’s just above the Jackson place, this one
strip, as I say. Then, there are several places, north slopes in canyons that had old growth. Of
course, the burning stopped when the settlers moved in, and the burnings in this area reduced…, well, the Douglas-fir popped up. And the Douglas-fir is the climax, or the dominant
species for the area. I’ve noticed, over the years, that, even if it’s brushy, eventually Douglas-fir
is going to dominate. There’s no way you can hold it out, because it keeps piling up there. I
mean, it’ll get a leader out. The first time it gets a leader out above the rest of the canopy, if
there’s anything else, it’s got it made.
Are you going to leave that old-growth timber?
Well, the management, we’ll get into the management philosophy of the University here. I
suppose it comes into play. And the forest as it was originally purchased, as Mary McDonald
designated it, was a forest for instruction and research. The old-growth portions that we have
on the forest are important for instruction and research, and, as such, they will be used for that.
And, like I say, there’s a possibility of some of them being used up for that. In other words,
if an old growth becomes necessary for some type of research, then we would cut it, cut an
area for research. But we don’t. My present policy, and this is John Beuter and the Dean [Carl
Stoltenberg], and the general philosophy I feel behind me of the University structure, is to not
go out of my way to destroy old growth. But I would keep that for the uniqueness of it in the
University system, while, from a strictly forestry standpoint, and just growing wood fiber, some
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of it should be gone. From an education purpose, it can’t be duplicated, and so it’s going to
stay—persist for the next 100 years, or 200, or 300.
Marvin, how did you know that the Indians burned this area? Have you read that, or can you see evidence, or are there any artifacts that tell you that, or what?
Well, there are. I mean, you get to reading the landscape in there. First, I get it from history
and reading what the people tell. I’ve talked with some old-timers in my life that have been
around and remembered some of the late parts of this.
And they remember the Indians?
First, I’ve read stories, and then I’ve known in my lifetime people that were born in the 1870s
that lived in this area. They got it from their parents. In other words, it was sent down.
Why did the Indians want to burn?
Well, like I say, as I understand it, the main reason they burned was for game hunts. It may have
been to improve the grazing so that it attracted game to an area where they could hunt it more
easily. But I think one of the things they did was use it for wildlife, for driving game. And you
consider the crude weapons they had. They could drive it into a confined area where a few men
could have a maximum chance of making a kill. And this was basically what they used it for.
Marvin, as you look at the area that’s encompassed in the school forests, can you trace epochs of land use,
like you’re talking about the Indians that first were here?
Yes, I think we can trace these. First of all, like you say, the Indians quit, or left the scene. The
white settlers that came into the Valley settled it. A lot of grazing took place, and, as the time
progressed, this land on the foothills became less of a place to graze, and more timber had been
cut. And the timber that had come in was harvested; it was close to the community.
When would that have been? Would that have paralleled the growth of Corvallis?
Yes, I think so. Like I say, we don’t have any record of the real early mills, of where they were
before 1900, but after 1900, especially the rebuilding time after the First World War, there
were numerous mills scattered throughout the area. At Oak Creek there was.... I know of three
mill sites on Oak Creek itself that are on the forest. There were probably five or six mill sites
on Soap Creek, just off the forest. Then there was a mill site just west of the, what is now Adair
Village. It was on the forest. That was a little later one, but it used to mill material close to
where it grew. The little sawmill—that wasn’t portable. But they tore it apart, moved it, moved
the steel and cut the wood back where it’s got the basic structure, brought a log down and
started cutting lumber and built a frame around it with the machinery. And either steam mills
or an early type of gasoline engines were used for power.
Now, how’d they transport that out of there? By horse?
Yes, a lot by horse. Or the early truck. And, in fact, the one on Oak Creek, there was a flume
from it down to Marys River.
Did you ever see that flume?
I’ve seen parts of it.
When was it built, do you have any idea?
Well, I don’t have any idea. I believe it was operating around 1919–1920, but as to how much
earlier than that and how long it was there, I wouldn’t have a whole lot of information.
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When were the last vestiges of it seen? When did you last see the parts of it?
In 1962, 1963, 1964.
It just disintegrated?
Yes. Like I say, when I found parts of it, it was like little tripods standing on a brick foundation. It was so rotten that you’d touch it and it started crumbling.
I was going to ask about other remnants. Have you found foundations of homesteads or other artifacts?
Yes, I know where there are a number of homesteads. In our earlier days on the forest as a
contractor, one of the projects Bill Davies had us work on, was that anytime one of these old
abandoned home sites was there, that if we got around to it when it was wet and cold in the
wintertime, we’d light a match to it and burn it. Of course, they were stripped buildings at the
time, just a shell.
But you could still locate the sites of most of these?
Oh, yes. I know where all the sites are. There’s one sawmill site that was never burned and I
could still find the old debris. And I think there’s probably half a shed around there that’s still
there. That mill was probably operating when the Army bought the Adair Tract.
So, you’d see Indian use for attracting game, and harvesting game, homesteaders’ use for clearing, homesteading, agriculture, grazing, sawmills, forestry-related kinds of uses of the land, and now you’ve
mentioned military. That would be another type?
Yes. The military came in 1941 and purchased that area out surrounding the place—what’d
they call that? It’s south of Suver, but there was a name on that little stop on the railroad
tracks. Anyway, the area between what is now Adair Village and Suver, and it went west for
about ten miles. The area around American was all purchased and almost up to Monmouth,
up to the Luckiamute, actually. The oaken hills out to the north there and those farm areas,
and that whole valley, would be the Berry Creek, Soap Creek Valley, was all military at that
time. Rifle ranges and maneuver areas.
What other activities related to the military occurred there? I’ve heard of reinforced trees.
Yes, there are rifle ranges, and their artillery impact areas left a lot of shots and bullets in trees.
We’re continually cleaning those areas out as fast as we can get to them, or when we come to
them. We try to identify the metal pollution area, and get rid of the wood and start growing
something that doesn’t have bullets in it. You’ve seen the sculpture in my office? In Diane’s
office, I’ve got a whole pile of wood up there. I call it wood pollution. It’s got shrapnel and bullets, and all kinds of things in it.
Have you ever found any in it that are artifacts from that period? Like cannon balls or something?
Well, they found some of those—especially out in the Dunn Forest and the Adair Tract.
Evidently, in the earlier times in there, they found some live shells and things that they were
worried about running into. Things like that for a while. And I think we’ve come up with
most of them.
Have you ever found any Indian artifacts at all in your work in the forest?
No. Ed Aulerich found an arrowhead on the 320 Road which would be up on the Dunn
Forest. The road building evidently plowed it out. He found it on the outer edge of the
road—a fairly good arrowhead.
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How long ago was that?
Oh, about three years ago.
Is that the only incident of someone finding an artifact?
The only one that I know of. There’s…. Let’s see now.... Another thing that we did, we felled
a tree. That would be just north of the Lewisburg Saddle. When that tree fell in the undercut,
there was an ax mark there opened up that we figured was made in 1826.
By counting the rings?
Yes, by counting the rings back to where this ax blaze had been put on this tree. It was put on
in 1826, which says that either an Indian or a trapper was in the area. This is 15 years before
the very earliest settlers in the Valley. But the Hudson Bay trappers trapped the whole Valley
by then, too. From 1800 on, I think. Or at least had had contact with the Indians where they
could have had axes and done their own chopping.
That’s all you know about from before 1850?
Yes, that’s the only thing that I’ve ever known out there.
What about after that time? Have you found plows or some other things that the settlers left?
No, I haven’t. I found a piece of these sawmills, but they’re 1920 mostly. And, other than that,
it’s been like these old buildings that have been abandoned out there were probably built
around the 1900s or so. I think probably if a guy had the time to spend around these old home
sites, he might come up with some rare coins, or.... We found the bottles occasionally, but I
think they’re all 1920s or later, too. I think they’re somewhere around the time or just before
the military took over.
Marvin, what do you know about Tampico?
Tampico was a community out just north of McDonald Forest on Lower Soap Creek where
the Old Territorial Road…, that road that comes across Tampico Road used to be a part of the
Old Territorial Road. We’ve got it on our map, yet it shows the Portland-Umpqua Road, and
that’s still a state highway right-of-way. The county maintains it, but it is a state highway rightof-way.
How was that highway used? Was that the early transportation corridor?
Yes, that was the early transportation corridor north and south in the Valley. It followed the foothills rather than through the middle of the Valley, because they didn’t
have the ballast to put on it, and the foothills—was easier to stay out of the mud on
the foothills. It took a little longer distance, but it took the easier route as far as maintaining the thing.
Have you ever heard anything about Jedediah Smith passing through this area on that road?
Oh, he probably did. I don’t know. Jesse Applegate is the one that staked it out more than anyone. Getting back to Tampico, there was a village built up there. And this is hearsay, too, except
the old school house was there when I heard earlier.
Oh, it was? In 1946?
Yes, the school house building was there until the late ‘50s. But, anyway, they say that at Tampico there was a church and a general store and a saloon or two and a race track and quite a
community. I don’t know when it happened, but they say that it was declining as Marysville
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was taking over. There was a stagecoach stop. I think as things started to improve they started
to bypass it, or someone was supposed to have gotten mad at the town of Tampico and they
bought it lock, stock, and barrel.
I thought it was Greenberry Smith who did that.
I don’t know who did it, but whoever it was tore it down—closed it up and tore it down. Why
he did it I have no idea. The race track was supposed to be down there where the—if you go
out there, there’s an area [that] was planted with Christmas trees of Scotch pine.... And things
got out of hand, and that’s the race track area. We bought a piece of property just across the
road from the Adair Air Force Base. I believe that was the Allen property? And the old man
they bought that property from had lived there all his life. And he told Harry Nettleton he’d
sit on his front porch and watch the Indians go by after the 1878 uprising in southern Oregon.
They moved those Indians, the Modoc Indians, to Siletz and Grand Ronde Reservations. And
he watched those Indians, the soldiers moving Indians by, in front of his house.
Would this have been on the Portland-Umpqua Road?
Yes.
Who was this that told Harry Nettleton?
Oh, Mr. Allen. I think his name was Mr. Allen [Ed Blake]. If you go out there to that old
home site [Blake Homestead], that was the oldest building we had, and they tore that down.
They used to rent that, and it got to be so hard to keep up.
The Allen Homestead?
Yes. If it had been anything that would have been a historical building in Benton County, that
probably was the oldest.
Could you locate that?
Oh, yes. I know where the location is. I think the dugout, the depression where the root cellar
underneath it was, is still there. Anyway, getting back to early history, Allen told about a couple
of girls riding out from Corvallis on a Sunday afternoon, and they had black locust switches.
When they left, they left the switches. They stuck them in the ground, and two big black locust
trees grew out from those switches. And that was corroborated. You can find out from one of
those women that’s doing the historical work of Benton County Historical Society.
Harriet Moore?
Yes. She corroborated that one of those girls was an Avery, I believe, and the other one was
someone else that was here in the early days.
Does that seem probable to you that switches could be stuck in the ground and grow to trees?
Well, black locust, yes.
Black locust would?
Yes, it does readily. That’s one of the ways of propagating it. Cut a limb off, stick it in the
ground the right time of the year, and it grows.
What about the legend of the gold-filled miner’s boot on Calloway Creek? What do you know about that?
Well, just what everyone else has heard. He was on his way north after striking it rich in
northern California or southern Oregon somewhere, and was afraid of being murdered for
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his money, so he wouldn’t stay in around a city. He’d go out and camp out back away from the
road, and bury his poke of gold under a tree somewhere for the night. He was murdered on
Calloway Creek, and they figured that the guy who did it didn’t get the gold. So there’s an old
map circulating around. That map gives an indication of where that gold would be.
Who has that, do you know?
No, I don’t. Probably several people. I ran into an old man here, I think it was just last year,
who was up in the Arboretum. He asked me if I knew where the old road went through there,
and I told him, “No.” I said, “I think maybe it went down close to where the highway is now,”
and he said, “Well, I think not. Up in here maybe?” “I don’t know.” He was noncommittal, and
I said, “Are you looking for the pot of gold?” And he started smiling, and said, “Yes, I got a
map.” I didn’t ask to look at it. I should have. Some of those guys are kind of..., they might not
have showed it to me, either.
So, that’s all you know about that? You don’t know whether there’s any truth to the legend or not?
Well, I think it’s true, but I imagine they don’t know. And the legend doesn’t say. They don’t
know if anybody ever found his gold or not, because I can imagine that over the intervening
years there were probably a lot of people out digging for it, and if they found it they weren’t
going to tell anybody. They probably slipped off, and so they could have been gone a long time
ago. And they’re looking for something that is nonexistent.
What about the first telegraph line that’s supposed to have passed by Calloway Creek? Do you know
anything about that?
No, I don’t.
I read that the Oregon’s first telegraph line was supposed to have passed somewhere near Calloway
Creek in McDonald Forest.
Well, I have an idea that it came up the Old Territorial Road, which would have been along in
through Tampico and right by this Allen....
What makes you think that?
Well, the Territorial Road was public property. And, for ease of maintenance, if they’d kept it
along a main artery. That’s why they did that in earlier days rather than going across the property. If it broke down, out across country, they couldn’t get equipment to it to fix it. But they
could ride the road and look at it.
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37
Forestry faculty in front of the Forestry Club Cabin.
PART III - FEBRuary 6, 1979
[Interview conducted by Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee at Peavy Hall, Oregon State University,
Corvallis.]
You were saying that the management plans in the forests now are better formulated and written
down?
Yes. As I worked on the job, and have been here in the School of Forestry, where I’m not just a
contractor, I’m trying to get some of these things down in a concrete manner. As we go on, one
of the things we see in the nation is dissatisfaction with the forest-management decisions. I get
somewhat uptight with this type of a philosophy, in that you compare it to a committee telling
a doctor when he should operate for appendicitis. No way we should do that, so the forester
is a professional person that can make land-use decisions, where the public are not experts,
although they have certain views. Historically, they like the green trees, and they look at them
from a certain category, but they’re not the ones to make that decision. On our forest here, we
have the basis for demonstrating land-use decisions to the public, and I think that’s one of the
key places our research, our education, and everything should point—that McDonald Forest
and Dunn Forest should be a model forest. We should have examples of what we can do in the
field of management, field of timber harvesting and regeneration, and recreation, and preservation, and the animals and the plants that are important to our basic philosophies of life to exist
there, and still use it. This forest has that ability. It is there, if we do it right. John and I, in looking at our land planning, are looking to make an inventory.
John Beuter, you mean?
Yes, John Beuter.
The forest supervisor?
Yes. We’re looking at an inventory of the forest, and our inventory of the forest is an inclusive
inventory, rather than a restricted one. It includes the history, like you’re doing now. We would
like to have the historical uses of every area, and we’re looking at maybe down to five-acre land
types, island types, of forest cover. We’d like to have on that inventory past uses. We’d like to
have any harvests or anything that was done on it, all of them on the record. The ground cover,
the soil type, underneath the ground cover—from the mosses right on up to the timber type.
The animals, possible animal use. If we’ve got an endangered species somewhere that’s out on
the forest, for instance, we’d like to have that specified. The flowers, for instance—where the
ladyslippers are. So it’s a comprehensive inventory. We’d like to have the inventory so it’d fit
into the TREES model, which is the computer program that John Beuter used in coming up
with the timber harvest supply in western Oregon, by the year 2000. So our timber inventory
system would fit that, but would also resolve some of the problems of herbicide uses, of which
we’ve done a lot of work on there. But I think there’s a lot more we can do. We can manipulate a stand where a herbicide is not nearly as necessary. Lot of it, the use of herbicides now, is
because of neglect. We’ve harvested and not, haven’t got a good regeneration back because we
didn’t know how, or we let it go by chance, or economics were a factor sometimes—in the ‘30s,
especially. You just couldn’t afford to regenerate land when timber was 50 cents a thousand.
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I was told by one staff member in the School of Forestry, that’s been here a long time, that Harry Nettleton’s technique of management was to drive through the forest about once a week.
Yes, Harry’s basic management was more protective than operational, and, of course, this
is his background. It’s not just Harry Nettleton’s management, but, if you look back to the
‘20s, and the ‘30s and the ‘teens, in the USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management,
Bureau of Indian Affairs, the first managers of the forests were basically preserving the
forests. The harvesting was of minor importance. To look back at that history, the private
ownerships in the nation were cutting their lands off. They had an abundance of old growth
in Oregon up to the 1940s even. It just depended on whether they got to it with a railroad
or a truck load or a skyline, or how you’re going to get it. As new methods developed, we
had new timber supply. We’re in that area now, the transition between the old-growth and
second-growth management, actually. The timber companies that are the producers of wood,
from their standpoint, the quicker they cut their old growth, the better off they are. It’s not
growing, it’s stagnated, and they’ve got to get that into production in order to supply wood
for a multimillion-dollar investment in a sawmill. Of course, the society as a whole can’t
afford to have them go down the tube any more than they can other branches of society. We
need wood. We not only need the sawmill to saw the lumber that we need, if we come to
zero-growth economy even, we’re going to need replacements. And the Forest Service sits
kind of in between there, on their old growth. Anyway, we learned out here, now we can see
how these transitions can be made.
Is there much old growth left in the school forests?
About five percent of our ownership is in old growth yet. Of course, this is not too much
different than it was in the year zero. The ecology of the area—in 1850, we were looking at
a savanna-type of forest in oak. And oak forests were grassy. The timbered ridges, as far as
Douglas-fir, the evergreen forest was on the north slope there in the protected areas where
they didn’t burn.
Marv, does this long-term plan involve other departments on campus? Like the Botany Department?
Yes, it does in a sense. When we recognize a need in those areas, we go to them for expertise
that we need in that area. It does in that sense, and then they’re involved in using the forest
for their classes. Probably they come through the back door more than others. If I was, if my
operation was destroying their instructional area, they’re either going to come to me all hot
under the collar or look for an alternative place to go without saying anything. The chances are
good that they’re going to give me a call on the telephone and say, “Hey, you’re ruining something.” So, by now we have listed every class on the campus that uses the forest. I have a record
of them in my inventory, and we try to upgrade that each year. We’re right now in the process
of making the annual report. My secretary calls each one of these individuals and asks them if
they’re still using the forest this way. And at the same time we try to fill out the information
by checking with departments and saying, “If you have some other use that’s come up that we
don’t know about, if you do then you’d better register it with us, or you won’t be protected if it’s
not a legitimate use.”
Marv, what about the special arrangements with the School of Agriculture lands? When McDonald
gave those lands to the University, part of those went to the School of Agriculture, didn’t they?
Well, this is the Dunn Forest. It’s a different situation in that the money for the closing of
the deed was taken from McDonald Forest funds, which, in a sense, come from Mrs. Mary
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McDonald, but it was from the operating budget of the forest. At the time they acquired
the Dunn Forest—the Adair Tract, it was called—it was military surplus land. It was offered
to the university on a pay-for-the-closing-costs basis plus use it properly for 25 years, then
it’s yours. They were approached with this possibility. The School of Agriculture at that time
said they didn’t have the funds and they didn’t see how they could use it anyway.
This is in the ‘40s, now? Post World War II?
Yes, this was the late ‘40s, 1948 or so, when they started negotiating on this. Well, Dean Dunn,
when he got wind of this, he said, “We’ve got the funds, we’ll pay for the closing costs.” Well,
I call it the fiasco that went on in the University Ivory Hall from then until it became a reality. The Federal Land Bank designated which was forest land and which was ag land, which I
don’t know if we had any choice in that.
Was it designated erroneously, in your opinion?
Well, yes. Much of the ag land in there, we paid for the whole. All the costs of acquiring the
land were to come from Forestry. There’s over 1,300 acres that was forest land that was designated, that went in the land that was designated agriculture.
So, does the School of Forestry own that land administered by the School of Agriculture?
No, we control it. The original agreement, then, was drawn up between the School of Forestry and the School of Agriculture. They drew a boundaries description that said this is forest
land, this is ag land, and all the forested land within the agriculture area will be managed
jointly by the Forestry School, and the income will go back onto the property. But it didn’t
say how it would go back onto the property, it just said it would. Now, when Harry Nettleton took over as Manager, he just played ignorant of the ag area, and stayed away from it
as much as possible. They built their fences where they wanted them to be. There were no
controls from our standpoint at all as far as managing those areas. When Bill Davies took
over—it was pretty much fenced by that time. He backed off from doing anything within
those areas. They had one sale area that Harry Nettleton put up in the ag area. It was the
only one that I knew that took place up there. Then, when I took over, I’d been looking at it
all those years anyway, and I started asking questions. And I started an operation in the ag
area. And, with John Beuter, we brought the thing to a head, and negotiated an agreement
with the School of Agriculture that these lands within the ag area were indeed forested
areas, that they were ours to manage, and that we would pay them an annual fee for five
years at a set amount. At the end of that five-year period, we would reexamine the potential
on those lands and draw up a, arrive at a new five-year fee. So, every five years, we reexamine
the potential and the market and come up with a new fee to pay them. That’s the way we’re
operating now. And this week I’m working on a report, a five-year report.
Who is the principal personality from the School of Agriculture that was involved in that early period?
Do any names stand out in your mind when the initial arrangement was made, the division of ag and
forestry lands?
No, I don’t. Is it Dr. Oldfield might have been? I’d have to go up and look at the records. I
think I could dig them up. As I say, looking at it from outside in, from here back, and it’s
real easy to say, but it looked to me like they left a lot of things unanswered and in a kind of
a nebulous condition that should have been answered rather quickly. One of these points, as
long as it doesn’t have anything to do with ag land, but it has to do with Dunn Forest—early
in the management of the forest, and looking at boundaries, they found that one property
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description didn’t fit. In the late 1950s, Russ Dix—who’s now Assistant to the Registrar,
isn’t he? Working on his master’s degree in engineering, Russ did a survey and a search of
the deed description, and came up with a recommendation which Bill Davies sent in to
the higher-ups, and nothing ever happened on it. In 1966, I was involved in a resurvey of
the area to check all this data. I had a graduate forest engineer working under me, and we
surveyed, ran about four miles of transit traverse, and checked. And I became satisfied in my
mind as to what had gone on. We turned in a written report of about 20 pages to Bill Davies, and nothing ever happened. So it’s still there. I’m going on the assumption that what’s
right now, whether it’s written in there or not, I think, when I can get time to do it, I need
to sit down and have the deed description corrected. Some of these problems like this, the
University had just let slide, because it was, really it didn’t matter in some ways. It was what
was on the grounds that counted. But, if they had been diligent in putting them together, it
would’ve been easier to operate later on. I don’t blame anybody for it. I’ve got an idea that—
knowing the government and when Paul Dunn was working on this, the federal surplus
property people, whoever they were, probably told them that, “We’ll divide this land, but the
Federal Land Bank will make the decision of whose is whose.” But I think probably we had
an option of not giving the money if it didn’t come the way we wanted it to. So all we’d have
had to say is, “It’s all our money, it’s all our land, and we’ll negotiate with the School of Agriculture and make the surplus property that doesn’t fit our uses available to them and they
can have them.” I think they could have done that. I don’t know whether, how it worked
out. What we’ve done, John Beuter and I, we’ve assumed some things. We’ve assumed, for
instance, that where they’ve put their fences up to now is where their property lines will be.
And everything outside of that fence line is forest land. While that’s not where the Federal
Land Bank designated, in some cases, that’s what we’re going to go by.
Is that error in the School of Forestry’s favor or in the School of Ag’s favor? What do you think is right?
Oh, both—give and take. In one area, there’s several hundred acres that’s outside their
fence that they’ll never fence, and it’s all timberland. And we went ahead, we’re not paying
them for growth on that area because we felt like that fence that they put in over a 30-year
period is a designation that pretty much designates what they’re interested in. And, on the
outside, we’ve had all the expenses of road building, and land development, and planting,
regeneration, reforesting.
Let me shift for a final comment to one last question this morning. The school forests have been real
important in the development of the School of Forestry from what I read in the history of this era. It’s
got a great deal of esprit de corps expressed by student foresters and faculty members, and a lot of it is
centered around the use of the forest and activities that happen in it. Has anything changed since you
were a student, and, from what you remember, as far as the way people in the school feel about the
forest or treat it?
Yes. Student use has. When I showed up here on the scene in 1946.... What I remember my
uncle telling me, back in the ‘30s, they had what they called an Arboretum Day. This was the
day set apart on a Saturday where all of the forestry students were involved. They were put into
work details, and they worked, they did free gratis work around the forest, cleaning up the pine
plantation, Arboretum plantings, maintenance of the cabin, road maintenance. They did things
all over the forest, and then, on noon that day, they got together for the bean hole beans lunch.
Harry Patterson was the one that made the beans every time.
41
Bean hole beans?
Yes, bean hole beans. You never heard of bean hole beans? They bake them or cook them some
to start with. And then they put them in a pretty much air-tight type of a can. They build a
trench, build a fire in the trench, and keep it going for a couple of days. Then they’ll cover,
throw a little dirt over those ashes and coals, put these beans in these cans in that hole, and
then cover them up with dirt. And they leave them there for a couple of days—at least a day.
Then, when you’re ready to eat, they dig these cans out, clean them off, open them, and you’ve
got a slow-cooked bean. You’ve got a crock-pot bean, from antiquity. And this was the main
part of the meal. After the bean hole beans, they usually gave all the forestry awards of the year,
and then they went to Cronemiller Lake and the forestry contests.
Ax throwing....
Ax throwing, hand-bucking.... Course they didn’t have power saws in there at all at the start of
that. But logging skills, climbing, log rolling on the lake.... As the years have gone by, they’ve
changed slightly on the contests. Well, sometime between 1950 and my return to the staff, or
coming on the staff here, that Arboretum Day changed, became the Spring Thaw, and student
involvement became not a total student involvement. The involvement of the faculty became
less and less, to where now we still have the Spring Thaw, the forestry contests, the dinner.
Lunchtime is no longer bean hole beans. It’s barbecued chicken or some other type of lunch.
But they have a forestry contest and the involvement now centers around the Forestry Club.
They’re arranging it. Some years it’s as few as 50 or 60 people there—except for the dance
that they have afterwards. Then more come in. They’ve left out the involvement in the forest.
They’re using the forest now, but there’s no free gratis work to speak of. They might do a little
maintenance around the cabin.
How do you feel about that change in attitude?
I think it’s rather poor. I think it’s developed along with a change of philosophies and attitudes
of students and faculty. I don’t think it’s just students. I think the need to be involved and just
donate, to do something for nothing has a lot of merit to it. I find a lot of the students that
are in Forestry Club now still find this to be a vital part of their activities there, in that it’s not,
“What can I get out of this?” but the attitude, “What can I put into this?” “What can I give?”
rather than, “What can I get?”
There has been a loss of the cohesive feeling then. As I read the history books, when Dean Peavy was
here, McCulloch and Dunn, during those eras, it seemed like there was more student-faculty cohesiveness centering around the forestry profession.
Yes, right. I think that’s accurate. I think, as that changed, then this use of the forest that’s
centered around the spring activities, especially, has changed, and it’s been a part of the
change. Of course, I think some of it has been because of the leadership of the forest, of the
University and the School of Forestry, in particular. Paul Dunn’s leadership, as he came on
the scene, was—they had a lot of the old school there that were active, and Dean Peavy was
still alive and active, and would be in the background in these traditional activities quite a
bit, so that some of the things that he instigated as starting a University School of Forestry,
even, were there. And then, as old faculty members dropped out, I think the change was a
gradual change. McCulloch was another strong dean, but his philosophies and the way that
he came on were a little more rigid. Like I say, knowing Dean McCulloch, he could turn
a person off. If he didn’t like him, he didn’t make any bones about it. If he liked him, same
42
way. So, you could get polarization fairly easily. And then Carl, coming on the scene after
him—I view Carl as an administrator’s administrator type of a person. He administers easily.
He looks at his overall program, makes decisions, and somebody else carries them out. But
he can sit back and look at them. And, in doing this, he has somewhat isolated himself from
the faculty and the students. They don’t get personal contact with the Dean.
Of course, if the School is much bigger than before, then it gets a little more difficult.
Yes, it’s bigger. And it makes it more difficult. But, on the other hand, there’s a type of personality that can’t do with that..., but that’s not Carl’s. His philosophies, the Dean’s philosophies, have shaped the rest of the School. I suppose if you had a different dean, you’d get a
different group of students and the way they’re involved in the whole affair.
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PART IV: February 7, 1979
[Interview conducted by Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee at Peavy Hall, Oregon State University,
Corvallis.]
Marvin, why don’t we start by using the year 1950 when you got out of Oregon State University’s
School of Forestry, and pick up the story from there.
Okay. I think we covered some of this, but in 1950 I graduated in Forest Engineering and
went to work for Umpqua Plywood Corporation based in Myrtle Creek. I worked for four
years as a field engineer in various capacities in southern Oregon. Then, in 1954, I went to
work as a contract logger with my brother-in-law as a partner. Our main activities were tree
farm service-type of operations. We were doing thinning, salvaging, stand regeneration work.
We started on Beaver Creek out south of Philomath that year on a Dr. Davidson’s ranch. He
was an absentee owner, and his forest was managed by a forester from Portland by the name
of Vernon Good. He laid out the logging for us, and supervised the contract. When we finished that contract, that took us about a year and a half to finish that contract, we did several
small jobs during that second year. Probably the low year of our existence, we probably logged
60,000 or 70,000 board feet the whole year. That was all that we took out. But, in the fall of
1955, I think the spring of 1956, we had been working closely with the Extension Service, and
about that year they hired a part-time forester position in the Benton County Extension, who
was Martin Thingvold.
He just retired this year?
He just retired. And, as part of what they were looking at, they were wanting to set up a
demonstration plot somewhere in the county where they could take farm or small woodland
owners out into the forest to show them what they could do on their property. The Spaulding
Tract was a piece of property that the School of Forestry owns. It’s managed along with
McDonald Forest, and it’s 160 acres of cutover with various stages of timber growth on it, on
the east side of Marys Peak. It straddles the Old Peak Road. This road was the original road to
the coast out of the Philomath area. One of the earlier roads went up along the slope of Marys
Peak, and down into Elk Creek, and on through the Harlan country into Elk City and Toledo.
This 160 acres had been logged. Probably it was nearly finished logging by 1921. I think they
gave it to the School, the University, in 1921 or 1922.
Who did that? Do you know?
Spaulding Logging Company, which was one of the early predecessors of Willamette Industries. I think they, some way or other, went from Spaulding Logging Company to something
else, and eventually what they owned ended up as part of Willamette Industries.
Why did they give that to the University?
Well, it was given I think, probably due to contact by the professors here—Dean Peavy and
others with the Spaulding Logging Company, and they gave it as a research forest for the
foresters to see what they could do to regenerate it, to grow timber.
44
Was the president of the company an associate of Dean Peavy?
I don’t have any idea. I have an idea, all right, but it’s just that—not based on any fact. But, as
I say, knowing Dean Peavy, I got an idea that almost everyone around this neck of the woods
was his friend and associate, and he raised funds anywhere he could get them. And I imagine
he convinced them that, when they got all the merchantable wood off, it was almost worthless,
and that, “If you’d give it to us, you wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it anymore, and it might be a
good deal.” And they did it. But, anyway, we got started on this tract in 1956, logging a 40-acre
demonstration plot, and that 40 acres in itself had all kinds of interest to it. I followed the old
skyline skid roads around on that place. You can see where they logged it over, find the deep
grooves, and where they had their swing-tree, and the skyline that ran down to the railroad
landing at the northwest corner of the property. This area that we were working was part that
was cut over then, and part of it had never been logged, because it was probably a fern patch
about 1921. And, when we were working, it was a small, pole-sized—the average DBH [diameter at breast height] in that 40 acres in the young growth was probably 14 inches. It was
rather thick, had a lot of broken-top trees from ice storms and snow-break from snow storms
in the past. Most of it, from the ice storm in 1936, or 1939—I mean January of 1940. I’ll get it
right. That winter. We logged that area, set it up as a demonstration plot.
Now was this under the direction of Peavy or
Nettleton?
No, this was under the direction of Martin
Thingvold. The School leased that 40 acres
to the Extension Service as a demonstration
plot. They could do anything they wanted on
it. The School got all the funds, just like they
do now. If they sold anything, the School got
it, but they let the Extension County Agent
do the managing on that area. When the
University saw what kind of work we did....
I was acquainted with Bill Davies, and he
was, at that time, active in the summertime in
the management, as a kind of coworker with
Harry Nettleton.
Was he the department head in Forest Management
at that time?
He was the head of the Forest Engineering
Department, and, of course, Harry Nettleton
was the forest manager. As soon as we finished this Spaulding Tract, we negotiated a
sale out on Oak Creek, there at the head of
Oak Creek. We logged an area there on the
forest in that same manner. The trees were
marked by the forest manager when we did
this thinning job. That was toward the fall
and the spring of the next year, which I think
would take us into the spring of ‘57. They
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liked what they saw, and they laid out several sales over the next couple of years and sold those
on an oral-bid basis to whoever came in after they advertised. We bought every one of their
sales. At all except one sale, I think, we were the only ones that showed up.
Why was that? Why did you have no competition?
Because there wasn’t anyone in the logging industry in this area that was interested in handling
small wood like that at that time. There weren’t any loggers that were doing this. We were in
a rather new field, although there were a lot of loggers that had the equipment. They’d go out
and look at these little trees, and they’d say, “Oh, we can’t make any money cutting those.”
Now, by little, do you mean maybe 40 acres?
No, we’re talking about a large area. But I’m talking about the wood size, the average log size
of 100 to 110 board feet. The mills were buying, paying almost as good a price for small wood
as they were for the large wood—a little bit smaller. But this got the [Forestry] School started
in the first really continuous thinning project. We’d run through this in ‘57 and ‘58. And then
Harry Nettleton retired in 1959, and Bill Davies took over as forest manager.
As well as the head of the department?
Yes, as well as department head. He was, I believe—30 percent or 25 percent of his salary came
out of the forest, and he was supposed to be 25 percent forest manager. When Bill Davies took
over, we explored the possibility. Because we hadn’t had any competition in bidding the sales,
and because of the research and instructional nature of the forest, we wanted to cooperate, or
integrate the harvest with the school activities—more than just to lay sales out.
And that hadn’t been done up to that point?
No, it hadn’t been done. It had been done as much as you could, but you can’t do it when you
put up sales that they give one year to cut, and you don’t know when they’re going to cut it
and who’s going to cut it or anything like this. But, up to that point, there had been a couple of
large sales, traditional type of sales, taken out by other people in the early 1950s. The Corvallis
Logging Company took out, I think it was a six-million-foot sale on Dunn Forest, at the head
of South Berry Creek, Section 21. Taylor-Hart Lumber Company bought a two-million-foot
sale down lower on the South Berry Creek two years after that first sale went out, and cleaned
up that area of residual stand of old growth. And they’d had a salvage logger that had picked
up salvage for several years around wherever he could find it, on a kind of a $1,000-contract
basis. We’d done some of that, too, in those intervening years. Just negotiate. A $1,000 contract
was the largest one they could negotiate without putting it up for bid. So we worked on a series of $1,000 contracts there for a year or so. Anyway, in 1959, we negotiated a two-year contract. We called it a timberland rehabilitation, salvaging, and marketing contract. So we were
basically looking at unproductive forest land, and we’d do what was necessary to rehabilitate.
By “we” you mean your company, you and your partner?
Yes, this was our company, in conjunction with, and with the school, too—the combined
group. In 1959, when we started this contracting, we’d sit down with Bill and decide what our
scope of operations was going to be, where we were going to start, and how we would carry
out the contract. At that time, we started on the north edge of McDonald Forest, north of
Cronemiller Lake, and covered all the forest land in a pattern year by year, working southward
toward Oak Creek, along the forest, so we covered the total forest ownership. We were aiming
at covering that in a ten-year period.
46
By covering, you mean you were going to rehabilitate that?
Yes, we were going to go completely across the forest in ten years, and do thinning, salvaging, whatever was necessary on this first time. And it just was an unmanaged forest—I mean,
nothing. It was just as we’d purchased it, and, like I say, it was anything from clearcut to real
old-growth patches.
The year you’re talking about that you started this would be what?
It would be 1959. We were looking at finishing that by ‘69. We just got underway good, and
we were also covering the Dunn Forest, which was the Adair Tract, in the same manner, starting at one end and working across it…. We just got underway, making good headway, and October 12, 1962, a storm hit. The storm came in without warning, with not much rain involved,
but the ground was fairly dry.
The Columbus Day Storm?
Yes. The ground was fairly dry, the winds were 150-mile-an-hour winds, and it hit our area
from about south ten degrees east, just slightly east of south. It blew down seven million board
feet in about two hours. And we immediately, like the next day, flew over the forest in a private
plane, sketched in the areas of blow-down, the heavy concentrations.
Do you still have that sketch?
Yes, I think I’ve still got it hanging up there in my map collection. On the fourteenth of—in
fact, I think, on the thirteenth of October, we already had equipment out cleaning roads. We
opened the county road across the saddle, and started working up the main roads in the forest.
In about a week, we had the roads open to where we could drive them.
Were any students involved in any of this activity, or was this just your company?
No, from our conception, it was a company operation. But we always hired more people in the
summertime than in the wintertime, so this was students. From the very beginning, we had
forestry students working for us on a part-time basis. During these times, about 1960 and ‘61,
we had a fellow, Bill Lickey, who is one of the partners in Century West Engineering now. He
worked for me as an employee. Then he wanted to do a little on his own. He subcontracted
under our contract for a two-year period, in 1962, winter ‘63. In 1964, we ended that type of
contract and Bill went to work with an engineer down at Oak Ridge. They eventually established Century Engineering, which they have about 70 employees—I mean, they’re a fairly
good-sized organization. The Columbus Day Storm rather drastically altered the forest pattern
on the forest. We really viewed it as catastrophic, which it was, as a devastation. It was probably
one of the biggest eye-openers that I had in forestry. I’m a forester and I realize trees grow, and
that they renew themselves. But, then, when we looked at this storm as being a catastrophe,
and ten years later it had healed itself in many of the places where we thought that the stand
was destroyed.... It still had an operational forest. It wasn’t growing as much wood as it could,
but it had come along and healed itself. Anyway, our philosophy when we hit this storm—we
decided, Bill Davies was the one that made the decision, that we would salvage everything that
blew down as quickly as possible, and we would not touch any standing trees that looked like
they would grow. So, it was just the downed material. We took out this seven-million board
feet in about two years.
Do you think that was a good plan?
Yes, I think it was an excellent plan. Actually, by the time we got back to it, I’m still getting
47
back to some now, it had had a chance to heal itself to where we could see what we’d need to
do when we came back to it.
You didn’t plant it, you let it heal itself, did you say?
Well, we planted. If it was a clearcut, we planted. But, if it had enough trees standing among
the blow-down, we didn’t. Like I say, most of my operation today is guided by what happened
in 1962. That’s 20 years almost, that’s 16 years ago.
So, would you say, in the history of the management of the forest, that the Columbus Day Storm may
have been one of the most significant events?
Oh, it is. It was the most significant event that we’ve had. And, of course, with Rowley and
Parker Tree Farm Service, it was probably the single most significant event that ever happened to us. Because, first thing, we didn’t have enough equipment to take out that volume
that quickly. We were geared at a million, million-and-a-half board feet per year and a small
crew, five or six men during the summer and three men during the winter, which was a nice,
quiet, pastoral type of an existence. So, we bought equipment to get the salvage out as fast as
we could. By 1964, we had it out, and we had equipment that was sitting around, or we were
wondering what we were going to do with it. And, while we had done a few outside jobs
and worked on our own property, we now had quite a little equipment and manpower. So we
started doing work for other individuals. We worked for Larson Lumber Company, took out
Forest Service, BLM sales for them over the few years. And we just carried on in McDonald
Forest and Dunn Forest like we had.
You mean you continued with the ten-year plan started in 1959?
Yes, we continued where we left off, and we continued that plan. Like I say, at the same time,
with the extra equipment and the extra manpower we had, we had more men than was necessary to take out the annual cut on the forest. That’s about three million feet. And we were
producing about six million feet annually by 1965. In 1965, Bill Davies and I took a trip to
the Southeast. We spent a month in Arkansas and Alabama chiefly, visiting the southern pine
areas, but basically timber companies or lumber companies. Georgia-Pacific had just bought
out the Crossett Company then. We visited Dircks Forest in western Arkansas and two or
three ownerships in Alabama, just looking to see what other people were doing in other forest
cultures, and broadening our experience. We came away feeling pretty good about what we
were doing ourselves, because in some cases we were ahead of them. Anyway, when, about
1966, my partner and I took a third partner, Gary Ferguson, we also purchased a tower. From
1966, January of 1966 to January 1, 1970, there were three of us in the partnership, and we
logged high, wide, and handsome, you might say, all over the place. Climbed all kinds of ridges
and logged all kinds of timber.
Is this because you had all this equipment now?
Yes, and we had more equipment after that. At one time, we had 50 men on the payroll. About
1969, I think, I had 50 men on payroll one summer, and, like I say, grossed $1,200,000, netted
$15,000 apiece, which makes a guy kind of an automatic check-writing machine.
Marvin, let’s back up a second. Let me ask you, what was Harry Nettleton doing all this time you were
doing the thinning and the rehabilitation?
Well, Harry Nettleton retired in 1958 or 1959. I think he retired in 1958.
48
And that was just when you were starting the program of rehabilitation?
Yes. He was out of the picture then, and he died, I think about, I don’t remember.... I don’t
think he lived until the Columbus Day Storm. He died soon after he retired; he had sugar
diabetes, and he had some complications from it when he was on the job. He had some complications from it that restricted some of his activities somewhat.
Well, then no manager was appointed?
No. Bill Davies was appointed immediately on him retiring.
But you actually were running the forest operationally?
Yes. Like I say, our operation was at that time—Bill made the management decisions, like the
basic. We decided where we were going to start, and what type of operation it was going to
be, and just what stand treatment was going to be in each case with each timber type, and we
carried the work out on the ground. We did our own timber-marking, or trained a crew to do
it. We laid the roads out. During this time, as we worked, like I say, the cooperation between
the school and the contractor—in this case, most of the major road systems were designed by
senior Forest Engineering classes, for instance, and then we went in and built the road. Sometimes, while they were still working on it, we’d be building it. Of course, we tried to look over
the systems and make sure that we corrected mistakes that they put in. And sometimes we
altered the mistakes and made our own.
How much did the students actually work with you?
Well, they worked quite a bit, especially the Forest Engineering Department, on a road location. And the silviculture classes and the land-use planning type of class were involved in it,
too, looking at some of the areas that…, usually after we had finished. Of course, the students
did all of the planting.
Like they do now?
Yes, like they do now. They’ve always had a student planting crew.
Were they always paid, or did they just volunteer?
Yes, they were always paid. One-hundred percent of the regeneration on the forest has been
the students . . . almost one-hundred percent. There’ve been times when we as logging contractors entered into the planting, too. Part of my logging crew would plant, on down time or this
type of thing, but that was a minor part of it. It was just to get a certain job done as quickly as
possible. Anyway, in 1970, we cut down on the size of our crew and basically pulled back. And,
although we still did some outside jobs, we were back to where McDonald Forest was about
40 to 50 percent of our work. That partner we had during that period of time left and formed
his own company. He’s still working and doing the job he was doing. Took part of our contract
at the time he left, and just kept, continued on that with Boise Cascade. We had their contract
to do all their logging, their high-lead logging, in the Valsetz area.
So how long did your company stay together then, after the partner left?
Well, we stayed together then until 1973, July 1st, when I quit and went to work for the university as the full-time manager.
Why did you do that?
Well, like I said, Bill Davies was retiring, and the school was looking at what we’d been
49
doing—where we were going from here, and seeing the need for some change, because they
needed somebody on the ground more than they had before. And, of course, I was looking from the standpoint that my children were basically gone, and I figured it was time for a
change in my lifestyle. And my wife said I still had the same hours I’d always had, because I
always left home at five and got home at eight before, and I just turned them around, leaving
at eight and getting home at five now.
They didn’t want to have a manager of the forest and a department head in charge? They didn’t want to
do that anymore?
No. Actually under the set-up we’d had with our logging contract during these years, I fulfilled
the part of—as land manager, as a contractor. I mean, Bill set the policy, and we discussed
alternatives and how to do it, but, on the job, on the ground, land-use decisions were made
by me, as they developed. Of course, during these years, like I say, I’d had 19 years of landmanagement decision-making experience by this time. I think my experience was unique, in
that I had the whole School of Forestry and all the researchers behind me, and when I made
a decision, I’d talk it over with Bill, and we could talk to the forest geneticists, we could talk to
the silviculturists, the engineers. We had the pick of the brains of the university, and that was
probably the elite in the United States, and it was a good working relationship.
Okay, why don’t we pick up the story of the transition between Bill Davies and you as the Manager of
the forest?
Yes. I think I was talking about the transition, about why the school was looking for a change,
and that when Bill retired they didn’t know what type of person would take over. In fact, if he
was overloaded….
Who is “they”?
The administration, the dean and the....
Stoltenberg was the Dean at that time?
Yes, Dean Stoltenberg was dean by the end. The operation had covered actually three deans.
It started under Paul Dunn. We ended under Stoltenberg, and Dean McCulloch was in the
intervening years there. But, looking at the needed..., we all felt that it needed more on-theground control, especially with Bill gone and the possibility of me not being there, or a different type of contractor. And so we…, the university looked at this situation, and Dean Stoltenberg and his administrators made the decision to go to a full-time manager and a part-time on
the staff, who would be the go-between the dean’s office and the manager. Carl said he didn’t
want the land manager coming to him and asking him about every little decision he made, so
he wanted that person on the staff who could work with him closer than the manager would.
When they were doing that, I was in kind of a position of proving myself. They didn’t know
just how I would operate, and I thought that was probably a good move to have this other
person.
So the chain of command would be the forest manger, the forest supervisor, to the dean of the school?
Right, yes.
Who is the forest supervisor?
Dr. Beuter was chosen as the forest supervisor, and has been for five-and-a-half years.
50
That was before he was department head of Forest Management?
Yes, that was before he was department head. He was in Forest Economics then. Then, Dr.
Beuter and myself have gotten along pretty well. We iron out differences and work together.
He was selected in 1973?
Yes, he was appointed to that position at the same time I was to mine.
Well, will that continue? Is that a long-term thing, or just an interim arrangement?
Well, that’s continuing until the administration changes. It’s part of our school set-up. If you
look at the draft of the school, it has the dean at the top, and the assistant deans that have
various categories of occupations and duties, and the department heads down with their staff
underneath them and off to the side. You see a line runs out there, and it says “forest supervisor” and “forest manager”—that’s all fit in together.
How has the management of the forest changed in the years you’ve been associated with it?
Well, as we look at the overall management, I have just a feel for the late 1940s. Basically, the
management in the 1940s.... When I first came into contact with the school, they were still
acquiring land. The basic philosophy was research and protection. They used it for field labs.
As Harry Nettleton was appointed manager, they started these sales. The sales were laid out
similar to the Forest Service, BLM, Indian Affairs sales, advertised. They followed the traditional method of sales. As we got further into this management plan and the operations of the
forest, which were actually specified by Mrs. McDonald, Mary McDonald in her will that was
leaving funds for a school forest.... It was to be used for research and education and operation,
with the money from any sales of material to go back into instruction and research, and, so,
anything that was left over for the development of the forest. This has been kind of a continual
process, as it needs to change. I see one of the things that’s happening is…, back in the beginning, a big timber sale with a high price on it was $35 a thousand, you know. And much of
the work we did, we paid $10 a thousand stumpage for it. We sold the logs. Now we’re selling
it for ten times that amount. And, as the sale price of material climbed, it climbed a lot faster
than the economy, and it gave us a better operating margin. As we came to a better operating margin—we see more detailed work that’s needed, work that I can accomplish rather than
bypassing because it’s going to cost us too much.
The forest is in pretty good financial condition, would you say?
Oh, yes. It pays its way.
Does it generate an excess of funds?
Yes. It generates a margin that actually allows.... That’s one of the key elements in our research
and instruction in the school as far as, you clear this with the dean, what you put in your report.
Marvin, how do you feel about changes from before 1973 and after 1973 in your life?
Well, like I say, my lifestyle changed drastically from long hours to shorter hours, in that
respect. It also changed from.... I suppose I spent a lot more time sitting on the seat of a
pick-up, and I don’t now. But, as far as my basic lifestyle, it hasn’t changed too much. One of
the reasons I’m land manager is that I.... Some people are, can read a book and remember it
verbatim. Well, my expertise is reading landscapes. And I’ve always liked to explore this type of
51
thing. And, as a logging operator on the forest, and knowing I was going to work in an area
beyond some time, I was never satisfied with just working with this area and then finding
out about the next one. I was always making little side trips, an hour or two at a time,
looking for problems or potential, so that over a 20-year period I acquainted myself with
the forest, and, like I say, some people can read a book, and can close their eyes and visualize
what that book said. Well, I’ve walked over that ground so much that if somebody asked me
about Section 6, I can say, “Oh, yes, Section 6,” and I start thinking about it and where I’ve
been and what I’ve seen on it, and recall it. I think it’s probably just special interest.
Well, the forests have had a special part of your life. When you begin to look back as a student and again
as an adult, you’ve come back and worked here over a long period. It’s had an effect on your life, hasn’t it?
Yes. McDonald Forest, this particular piece of property, has been…. I’ve been associated
with it for 33 years, more or less. Of course, I’ve had widening interests at the same time,
and, while I started out as basically a forest engineer with a forestry background, as I
worked in this area, the silviculture of the area, of the trees, the watershed management,
the recreation, all the other things associated with this forest have been a key part of our
operation for years…, to begin to integrate them. One of the things that’s interesting is,
when I first came on the staff here, we had a meeting with the landscape architecture/
planner of the Siuslaw National Forest in a seminar where he was explaining how they
planned visual management of timberland and what roles it took in laying out timber sales.
I got to talking to him after the seminar, and I invited him to go on a trip of the forest with
me. As we looked at the forest and what’s happened in it, over the years of development,
he viewed our operation as being a model example of what he’d like to accomplish. We’ve
done this without a big splash or anything. We just fit it in as a matter of course. Some of
it accidentally, but some of it, as it happened back then, well, it looked good to us, and we
followed through with it.
Let’s talk about some of the multiple-use ideas in the forests. We haven’t mentioned hunting at all, and I
know that hunting is allowed. When did that start?
Well, hunting started in the early, when they started acquiring the forest. I don’t know at
what stage they decided that they couldn’t tolerate hunting because of the student use,
which is critical. So, they negotiated contracts with the State Game Department, at that
time, and now it’s the Fisheries and Wildlife Department, to set aside the McDonaldDunn Forest as a refuge. Up to 1953, it was a game refuge with no hunting allowed. But,
about that time, as it became a refuge, the deer population built up because of no harvest.
Population built so they couldn’t plant a tree without it getting eaten. And this was almost
100 percent of their plantations that were being devastated. So, they worked out a program
with the State Game Commission at that time to have controlled hunts. They coordinated
this with the Fisheries and Wildlife Department on campus, so the students there would
have a learning experience out of this besides having data, collecting data that they didn’t
have from anywhere else. In 1953, they started this controlled hunt, and from 1953 to
1973 it was set up to where we had a well-regulated hunt, and an average of 300 deer were
harvested per year. Some of these statistics they gathered from these hunts are invaluable in
black-tailed deer management. They tell you, for one thing, that black-tailed deer are similar
to other wildlife, that they respond rather quickly to habitat, food population—I mean the
food supply and population. And, when you hunt a heavy hunt, you get a big response, the
new fawn crop jumps almost immediately, and the deer are bigger and healthier. It was an
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either-sex hunt for the 20-year period. Real good statistics. It showed that, in order to grow
timber, if we hunted heavy, we could grow timber and have a good hunt, too. Now, during
those years, I don’t have any real close observation on the browse that took place in the late ‘50s
and early ‘60s. But, from 1965 to 1973, I was pretty close to it. And the deer browse dropped
down to almost nothing, five–ten percent, which is tolerable. Some of our young forests, that
we have established now, came in that period, until way up out of the deer’s reach.
Did you ever protect the seedlings with anything?
Well, we’re trying that now, because in 1973 there was a drastic change in management. If you
remember back to 1973, the mule deer population in eastern Oregon had been decimated for
a variety of reasons. And the political response to this low hunt in eastern Oregon was against
all hunting. Shut the hunt down, you’re killing all the deer. Well, since then we have never been
able to get enough hunting days to get back to 300 deer a year on the forest. We’ve averaged
100 deer a year for the last five years, and with an average of 100, we’re now having 52 percent
of the seedlings browsed last year. On the forest area up on the Spaulding Tract, I had almost
100 percent browsed.
Does this recent accident death....
Well, it’s sure to affect it, probably several ways. The Game Commission, Fisheries and Wildlife Commission, is going to be motivated politically to look at that, because it happened on
the forest, where they have a controlled hunt. That’s going to be used by the opponents to
hunting to try to limit hunting further.
Is that the only case you know of, of a hunting accident in the forest in those years?
Yes, that’s the only fatality. There were a couple of accidental woundings that were the selfinflicted type.
When were those, do you recall?
No. One of them.... When they first started hunting, they had bow hunts for a couple of
years, and the bow hunter had shot himself in the hip with an arrow. I think what he did
was, he had his bow strung up, and he stumbled and fell. And, as he fell, he in some way or
manner got the bow stuck in his thigh—the rod and head. Then he had to be hauled to the
hospital and sewn up. And they had some guy who’d shot himself in the thigh or the leg or
something, the same way, with a pistol. These things happen. The statistics show that about
two percent of the fatalities from hunting come from somebody shooting another person
as a mistake. But the rest, the 98 percent of fatalities, come from either self-inflicted or
partner-inflicted, usually at close quarters because it’s carelessness of handling a weapon—
either putting it in a car, or loading it, or crossing a fence when it is loaded, slipping and
falling, this type of thing.
I was going to ask.... That reminds me of vandalism in the forest. I understand there are a lot of problems?
Yes, there is. Of course, vandalism and hunting go together somewhat. Partly because they
leave the gates open at the time they’re hunting. We’ve had different vandalism problems, as
the society values have changed, that we’ve seen coming about in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s—a change
in family structures and values. We see an increase in vandalism up through the present time,
but I think we’re seeing a slight decrease now. I don’t know whether that decrease is because
we keep a closer tab on it, or whether the vandal’s changing his patterns of lifestyle or his
values, too.
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What have been the principal types of vandalistic acts?
Damage to the equipment used on the forest is probably the number one vandalistic act.
Number two would be breaking and entering into the Forestry Club Cabin, and the old Dean’s
Cabin, when it was around, any buildings on the forest. Third would be damage to the structures, fences, roads, this type of thing. And I suppose the fourth would be little malicious acts
like damage to signs or shooting something up, signs and this type of thing. But I’d say the
first and foremost is the damage to equipment. Shot up, bullets through radiators, attempts to
break the engine with bullets. We’ve had them misuse and overturn, intentionally get on them
to start them up, and try to destruct them.
Has this decreased in recent times?
No, I don’t think so. I think that this is rather constant. I think that the decrease comes only
with an increase in vigilance by the owner or the operator. We don’t leave fuel out in the woods
anymore. We take it home.
Do you have any regular surveillance system of a person that drives the roads to check for things?
Yes, Ivan Cutsforth. He’s a technician that has worked for me ever since I took over as forest
manager. He’s the resident technician out at Peavy Arboretum. Part of his job description is
to be there on evenings and around weekends, and just to be a person that could stop vandalism if he could catch a person in the act. In 1974, I believe it was, we had a rash of vandalism,
and illegal uses that prompted the sheriff to deputize me. So, I’m a deputized member of the
sheriff ’s department and I can issue citations and make arrests on the spot.
Have you ever done that?
No, I never did. Come awful close to it, and sometimes I should have. I let them get by with
things. Some of these, I guess a minor type of vandalism, things like drinking parties and
things. And the main part of those is littering the area, and misuse of the area sometimes to
the point of minor destruction of the site.
Well, the entrances to each of the roads are now gated, are they not? And locked?
They’re all types. There are people that walk in, that ride in, that ride in illegally. They break in
through a fence, or they find an alternate route in. This is one of the games that we play. They
find a way in, and I find a way to keep them out. I block it, I find a way I can keep them out
continually, and they look for another way in. When they find it, my job—I find it, I block it.
Is this any particular group you can identify? Is it teenagers? Are they students?
Some of them. They’re students. I have an idea that probably the vast majority of them are
students. The other category is just criminals. For instance, we have a criminal element of the
society that vandalizes loggers continually. They steal their equipment. What they do with it,
they probably sell it down the road to some other logger. This is one of the elements. The student element is high on the list. Adjacent landowners that are dissatisfied with what’s going on
in the forest are, enter into it to a certain amount, especially in cutting fences and deciding that
they can have their own way, and that we’ve got no right to fence them out or tell them how
to get in. Vineyard Mountain Estates, for instance, before it was a part of the development
it is, had a road that came up to the boundary and had a metal lifetime gate with a lock on it
with access for the Consumer’s Power Coop. These illegal-entry people found that gate. They
could tear it down easily, lift it off its hinges. They did that a few times. Each time they did it,
Consumer’s Power put it back a little stronger, until it got to the point that they’d just hook
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onto that gate with a four-wheel winch of some kind, I don’t know what it was, and rip it completely apart, pull it out, throw it aside, and come through. At that point, I dug a trench across
that road and told Consumer’s Power they could look for another entry. The trench gradually
got filled. By the grapevine, I found that one motorcyclist tried to jump the ditch and broke an
arm. But they eventually, in about three years, they had enough of it filled so they could cross
it with a four-wheel drive. The next time we went in there, we put a log barricade that was two
logs high with a dirt embankment four-foot wide by four-foot deep against it, a trench behind
it. And no one ever broke that barricade.
That’s still there?
Yes. Then Vineyard Mountain Estates rebuilt the road, so that now there’s a vertical bank
below that, but no entry. But, just up the road from that, they cut the fence and came in on one
of our access roads. We rebuilt the fence along there, put fenceposts in this place so they’re four
feet apart, strung the wire on it. They pulled that down. My next step was that little narrow
road, with rather narrow access. We were cleaning out the Arboretum—cutting dead limbs
and branches, and taking out undesirable plants. Well, we started hauling them in a pick-up
and dumping them in that road until we had limbs and debris dumped on that road now for
50 feet.
Just a big slash pile, huh?
Just a big slash pile, cut down through and filled it, so no more access there. And I think last
year I didn’t have a break in there.
Why do people want in the forest so badly? Just for recreation, or what?
Well, one of the reasons they want it is because it’s locked.
Is that highly fenced?
Yes. All the roads are gated, and a locked gate is a challenge to some people. “By golly, I’m
going to get in there and find out what’s in there.” And when they get in there, they find out
that really, the challenge is getting through the gate. And I think another part then is that
for drinking parties. And they get in there and know that the sheriff or nobody else is going
to catch them. They can throw a wild party, they can go park on a lover’s-lane type thing and
don’t have to worry about anybody catching them. So there are the shady type of recreation
that you’d say is the reason for breaking in. Illegal hunting. They know this is a refuge, and
there’s likely to be more deer there, and easier to spotlight, once they get behind the gate. The
chances of having somebody come through and squeal on them are less.
Let me pursue that a second. I wanted to ask you a while ago, you mentioned deer hunting. Are there
other kinds of hunting that occur legally in the forest?
Not now. I suppose when it was called a wildlife, or game refuge, which it was until 1975, this
protected only game animals. And, legally, I couldn’t stop anybody from hunting small game
birds, or anything that wasn’t designated game animals. The new designation.... We’ve designated it a wildlife refuge, and the description of wildlife refuge protects all wildlife. So, under
this designation, we could restrict hunting to nothing. I mean, they just can’t hunt out there,
only with a permit.
What other wildlife have you personally seen in the forest?
We’ve got all the wildlife of Oregon except the wolverine, I guess. And the wolf, maybe.
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Do you have any endangered species there?
Well, we’ve got some that are so-called endangered, like the spotted owl and the pileated
woodpecker. We’ve had a good supply of pileated woodpeckers, and the spotted owl is not on
the endangered list. I don’t think it’s endangered; it’s just endangered in the minds of a few
people. But we have cougars. I saw cougar tracks Monday, last Monday, in the snow. We have
bobcat, quite a supply. I think our cougar population is growing. Bear are occasional users
of the forest. I’ve only found one den that I’ve got an idea was a bear den. Beaver, we’ve got
hundreds of beaver, and, of course, the opossum, the raccoon, and all the small animals—the
rabbits, the squirrels, flying squirrels, mice….
Why don’t we end this morning by having you tell us what you see for the future as far as the Paul
Dunn-McDonald Forests go?
Okay. Of course, my view of the future use of the forest is basically a continuation of the policy
we have now. The forest is primarily research and education, probably in reverse order, but
they go together so you can’t separate them. It’s an operation, and operation is a key part of
the research and education of the forest. The forest is basically a dynamic community. I mean,
it’s not static in any way, and, of course, that’s one of the basic mistakes we make in thinking
of the forest—is how it was last time we viewed it. And it’s not that way, because it’s changing
constantly. The changes are like laying line upon line and precept upon precept, like growing
a whorl each year on a tree. But they happen and they continue to happen, and the storms
and the influence of man, I think, change it. I view our future management of the forest; we’re
gradually around to a better management plan.
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PART V: February 23, 1991
[Interview conducted by Bob Zybach, beginning at the Oak Creek Guard Station and continuing
in the forest. ]
You know about the Guard Station?
Nope.
Well, the old buildings that the 3-Cs built were the . . . this is one here to our right back here,
was the guard station.
The laboratory sign up there?
Yeah. That used to be a garage, and they put the addition over the top of the garage. But the
old original building is the one on the back end of it. And this building right ahead of us here
is part of the old buildings, but all the rest have been rebuilt. And there was a residence here
before they built it. You see the old orchard. And it’s grown over with alder and things, there
are just a few that are left there. There’s another orchard on this side, there were some real good
fruit trees on this side of the creek. And that’s pretty well overgrown.
Now, do you know anything about the trees down here on the left of the creek? Are those wildlings, or…
looks like they’ve been hit by beaver here lately.
Dr. George Barnes established a survival plot right here on this slope. Might have been during
the 1940s. It was one of the first times they got good survival on a grassy slope. And there were
studying this for quite some time, into the late ‘50s. That’s how all the first Douglas-fir plantation died—they were overcome by the grass. And this grass here was a variety of oat grass.
Is that brachopodium we were talking about?
Well, I don’t know the scientific name. I talked with the people, it’s a variety of oat grass, you
see it hangs on into the deep shade.
Yep. This is the only place anywhere I’ve seen Doug-fir in grass.
But it discourages everything else. It makes it look like a park. You see there are not any ferns
coming underneath there, the brush died back. It died back because the grass takes moisture . .
. when it gets up to that age you get kind of a characteristic, it’s just like a park.
Now, George Barnes, was he with the Forestry Department?
Yeah, he was a professor in the College of Forestry. They called it the School of Forestry then.
A researcher.
What did he use to get the fir established in the grass? What was his method?
I don’t have that available. I was out here with him on a tour, and he was talking about it. At
the time, they were talking about spacing. We thinned through here, the other research project,
just about 300 feet up on the hill. Mike Newton treated the Doug-fir with herbicides, killed
them the year before we logged them, to determine if he could get them to shed their bark and
be a lighter wood when they were hauling them.
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I’ve got a question on this grass and fir. Have you ever seen grass that hangs in this shady of . . . have
you ever seen grass and fir growing like this before?
Only on Oak Creek.
Nowhere else, anywhere?
Not on McDonald Forest. I haven’t seen it anyplace in Oregon where you get this kind of
relationship. Usually when it gets deep you get the herbs that grow in the deep shade instead
of grass. But in here, across over there, where they’re doing all their research over there . . .
Uh huh.
This grass was in that whole area. It runs all the way up to the top of the ridge. I haven’t found
it down in the Baker Creek, yet. I don’t know whether it’s creeping through, or . . . I have an
idea it’s got a fairly heavy seed that doesn’t blow very far.
I’ve got another question right here. There’s beaver coming in and they’re hitting these trees. I found a
research report by a man named Storm that said they stocked beaver on Oak Creek in the 1940s. Do
you know anything about that?
Never heard of it.
What’s the earliest you remember beaver on the Forest?
Oh, beavers were here when I was here. In 1946, there were some beaver.
On the other side of Oak Creek, or Soap Creek?
Oh, Soap Creek, they were just way down low on it, just inside the gate on Soap Creek. In
fact, I don’t remember them really being there. They were coming in around Sulphur Springs.
There were some there. But they weren’t like they are now. Here now they’re up every draw.
And they’ve progressed up these. When I started in here in 1973 as manager, there were hardly
any beaver dams above . . . there were maybe one or two above this road that goes across to the
left up here, and in just a few years they worked up there. And the Botany Department has a
place they bring their classes out and they’re studying the ecology. And I asked him what he’s
going to do about the beaver, and he said, “Well, what we’re studying is the change over time.”
It didn’t matter to them.
That was my next question to you. What do you think they should do with the beaver?
Control them. I don’t think . . . they do a tremendous job as far as change in the characteristic
of the stream but when they get over populated, their population will take care of themselves.
They’ll get diseases and things will kill them down. And they outlive their food supply, or out
produce their food supply, and then they pick up and move out. They don’t stay if they haven’t
got food, they go looking for it. But if you’ve got some valuable species there or something,
you’re going to have to control your beaver or change your species.
Do you think there’s any valuable species on the forest that makes it worth trapping these, or do you
think it’s worth it just to let natural controls . . .?
Oh, I think natural control. I think if they would let people trap in here it would be a good idea.
To keep the population down, keep them viable, keep a healthy population. Without the trapping they’ll get . . . they told me that when the population builds up against this food supply they
start fighting each other. And the pelts aren’t worth anything. They can’t even sell them, they’re
all scarred up. And the buyer doesn’t want them. So we’ve got those things working together.
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Can you think of anything else in this spot?
No, this was the area . . . what’s the name of that, I wrote a letter to a woman that was thinking
her grandfather was buried on the forest?
Would it be LeGrand or Tortora?
No. I can find it back in the office if you don’t have it somewhere. He settled this, I think
he . . . I don’t remember whether it was a land claim or a homestead. And then he sold it.
That was in the 1850s, and he sold it to a son-in-law.
Is that Robinette?
That may be it. I don’t . . . And the son-in-law owned it. It was in the family. I followed it all
the way through until after 1900. It was in the family until about 1900. Then it went into other
ownerships and eventually the school got it. But it had broken up . . . it was interesting to see
how it changed over time.
But she thinks he might be buried out here?
Yes. She didn’t know where he was buried. And from what I could get, I didn’t know either;
he’d gone into business in Corvallis some time before that. And I just gathered that no, he
wasn’t buried here. I just figured he was buried somewhere else because he hadn’t been around
here that long. It was a Donation Land Claim, because I tried to find the thing. There’s no
record of it in Benton County. Because I was looking for, she told me a Donation Land
Claim, and I looked for all the Benton County Donation Land Claims with that name on it.
There weren’t any. I checked with Lincoln County, because Lincoln County was part of Benton County at that time, and there weren’t any there. And finally, I found it in the records in
Portland, from the BLM office in Portland, it wasn’t even down here. But see, I had to go to
Portland to find it, and it was misplaced.
Well, the Robinette DLC shows up on the map. But as you say, no survey notes on record.
Well, the survey notes are in Portland, at the BLM office in Portland.
[At Casey Randall’s Arboretum]
Apple trees. And I think they’re volunteers—wildlings. But we used to eat apples off them every time we’d come through here. In the ‘40s they were good, in the fall. These trees down here
are natural. They might have been planted by someone. Casey Randall started an arboretum up
this creek, in early 1950s. Then he died, heart attack, suddenly, and nobody ever followed it up.
So that arboretum that was started here was by Casey Randall.
Yeah, Casey Randall.
Was he with the Forestry [School]?
Yeah, he was the professor, the tree identification, dendrology professor.
We’re seeing about, I don’t know, looks like 100 dogs. Probably ten of them. What do you think about the
recreational use of this forest for people running dogs.
Fine, if they keep control of them. I think if they just get out here and let them take off, they
got problems. I had a government trapper trapping coyotes out here. The sheep people ran
sheep here, and he wanted to get some coyotes and see if he could stop the loss of lambs. And
I told him, sure you set your traps, but you don’t put them close to the road, you put them
back away from the road a little bit, there are people walking dogs through there. If a dog gets
59
caught with your traps, you’re in trouble. He said, “Oh, I won’t do that.” Well, he went right
up there and did it. And I found the trap after a dog owner watched his dog get caught in the
trap and released him, and I went up, he told me where it was, and I went up and I pulled it up
and took it home with me. It was 20 feet off the road, it was right there!
We just passed . . . is that the sedimentation test there?
Yeah. That is water quality research that that Forest Engineering and Pete Klingeman in Civil
Engineering have been involved with for years and years and years. They started that in the
1960s. And a lot of what they found out on this stream by the control, we have a place up
stream where they put material into the stream, and they measure what arrives down here, and
every time they had a heavy rain they measured bedload movement. One of the things that
they arrived at here that helped in setting up the laws for water quality is the early requirements of the law were more stringent than what happened in nature. If they’d have stayed with
that water quality, there’s no way they could maintain it. Because the bedload movement just
can’t stand that.
They were trying to overcome nature and erosion. Natural erosion.
Yeah, they were just looking at the water quality, and the amount of sedimentary, suspended
material and the type that just raises and drops if you disturb the streambed and you just can’t
control it to that point. But then they, I think that this here dirt matter, debris, they started
picking up on the debris in this creek. And then, in fact they were throwing limbs and stuff,
branches in up here and measuring what got down at the control station. The sizes, and all
that kind of stuff. This has always been a very difficult place to stock. They’ve tried to; they’ve
planted it and planted it over and over again. You see a little ____ right there in the middle of
everything right there?
Yeah.
They fenced that. They planted and put a fence around it. So that the deer weren’t able to
browse that. They’d come in with a deer browse . . .
So you think this open field here, part of the difficulty, part was competition from grass, but part was
deer browse?
Deer browse. You see, there’s another one. They have new fence enclosures in here.
Who did that?
I think George Barnes and Robert Kenniston, Dr. Kenniston. They were professors in the ‘50s.
All of them are dead now. But this research project here with the fence thing has been there
for better than 30 years, and I see now that it’s almost non-existent.
But they put hardboard on that; that was a national study. They had three or four duplications of this around the United States. One in Florida where the tropical type of situation,
one in the Midwest, and this one out here in the Northwest, and I think they may have had
one down in the Southwest where it’s dry. They put these particleboards, send them to all
these places with different kinds of paint, different glue structures, and then they test them,
they drop a weight on them and measure how far it indented over time. And this helped them
develop the particleboard industry we have in the United States today. [It] was developed
because of techniques that were proved by these things.
60
Who designed this experiment, or who worked on it?
Well, the Forest Research Lab with a whole variety of people over time. I’m not sure.
We just passed our wood products, stream sedimentation, grassland conversion, and a failed arboretum
out of that . . .
I didn’t point out . . . there were a couple of trees back there that Casey planted. And we’ll see
some up here that are hickory.
What impact is the research on this creek, do you think, having?
It probably keeps some people from operating.
The old sawmill that the school put in? A Corley sawmill, war surplus sawmill was given to
them. It was right here.
On this corner here, this intersection.
Right where the blackberries are is where the mill was. The road up there on the slope is where
they brought in their logs. They had a roll away, they just rolled them across down on the roll
away, no power equipment. Roll them in and sawed them. The lumber came back down this
way and it was all hand. There wasn’t a live roll in it, hardly. I think there was maybe one live roll
off the head rig. We sawed all the logs for the Forestry Club Cabin in this.
Did this mill have a name?
No, just school sawmill.
Was there anything here before the sawmill?
I don’t know. I never saw that before that. The old mill that was here in the First World War
days was right above us. Along with this structure, they built a grader shed, they called it. The
school had a road grader, and it was right up here. We’ll get out and walk around here. It was
right where that blackberry patch is growing! The fence post right down there.
Yeah.
That was another one of those fenced plots to plant trees inside of.
Okay, we’re by a blackberry patch here at the intersection of Homestead Road, and this is where the
road grader shed used to be. Looks like the Indian plums are growing.
Now, right in here . . . there was a building right in there. An old, I think probably either living quarters for the people in the sawmill or a residence at this point. There’s a stream coming
down there, and there could have been farming in the early days.
Was there a building still there when the sawmill was there?
Yeah, that building was there when we went to work in ‘73, and one of the first things I did
was buy a metal detector to pick up bullets in the trees over on the Dunn Forest. And I was
trying it out, that old building, I thought I’d do some sleuthing. And I went around over that
thing, and I got a good strong ding. And I started digging, and I came up with a boot. And
what was ringing the thing was the rivets or the eyelets, they were copper. And I dug that
thing out, I don’t know how it survived, but it was still hanging together some. And I found
some machine gun clips, the National Guard used this for maneuvers. And they’d left a string
of live clips, and I found that when I was messing around. But that was right on that flat
there somewhere.
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Your best guess, a mill house?
That’s what I’d guess. That went along with this mill. There was a flume . . . and it started way
up, we’ll go up where the head of that flume was.
Okay. Now that part of that flume was still here when you were still working wasn’t it?
Yeah, when we built that road up there, west fork of Oak Creek Road, the 6020 Road in 1963.
And some of the props on that flume were still standing. If I really look hard, I think I could
find . . . they had brick sometimes at the base.
Going through the E.E. Wilson maps I found a map of the proposed flume in 1915.
Yeah, that’s what you were telling me. Here we can see it. See right down there, you see two
pipes sticking up. Well those two pipes I think were associated with the log lift where they
brought the log out of the pond.
Oh, so the pond was right in through there?
I think they dammed this creek up right there, and where those two come together, they had
the pond in there. And there were some old boards in there. I think this thing here was a sawdust pile, where it burned, where these berries are so heavy.
Are these two pipes the only two things that you know that are left from that?
That’s all that . . . I think we can get down there.
Okay. Looks like something’s nibbled that alder right there.
See this is where those old boards . . . it was underneath it. The first time I saw this, see this is a
piece of railway stuck in the road here.
Do you remember any stories about this mill or anything?
No, except that one of Bill Davies’ students said his grandfather worked in this mill, in the
First World War time.
Did he say what they cut here?
Oh, they cut the timber off the hills. Doug-fir.
Was it a tie mill?
I don’t know. But they cut whatever floated. I have an idea that it was more than a tie mill.
That’s wire tied around that.
That looks pretty recent though, that doesn’t look like anything with the mill.
It’s too small to have been mill wire. It’s probably something somebody is doing some research—tied something down.
So this is where they yarded the . . .?
Yeah, I think they had their dam right down there, or somewhere here. It’s really not identifiable. And a lot of times . . . when they built their dams like that they didn’t move a lot of dirt to
do it. They put some big logs across and cut lumber and tucked them in and blocked the water
off that way. There’s an old barrel that’s got a heavy rim welded on to the top. Of course, those
were a lot heavier barrels than they make now. See, there’s a piece of lumber.
Looks like it’s been through a fire.
I think that’s just rot.
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Is this kind of a bed through here? Can you remember any road beds?
Oh, not that you could identify through here. I think they dropped their logs in, and how far
they backed the water here, oh, probably 700 or 800 feet up the road here, where the first skid
trail came into the creek. So they floated the logs down from there. And I think I can find out
for you.
I worked in an old stud mill on the Missouri Bend on the Alsea, the first summer I was here
and going to school. Art St. John had built that mill . . . he’d built a steam mill just below it and
sold it and he built this one on the upper end of the pond.
On Missouri Bend?
Yeah. It was back up Salmonberry Road, I think they call it. I put this ore culvert in. In 1964
we had the big flood? That was designed to take this stream at the 100-year flood. And in ‘64
the water came right up to going over the road and went down again. Didn’t come over the
road. And we had big mass land failure up above.
In ‘64?
Yeah. And I think what did it was surge. It probably came down, it went up for a period of a
few minutes and came down when the surge passed.
On this 6020 road, we did an experiment in using Reynold’s Road Packer. It was liquid material that the guys were promoting to compact the road and require less rock. We used it . . .
you mixed one gallon with 500 gallons of water. And you put it on and you worked it into the
soil—with a rototiller. And we took a sample down to the university, and all they could tell us
it was about 35 percent sulfuric acid and the rest of it was pulp liquor. So we took one 500-gallon tank and worked this strip right here to just around the corner. And then the next 500 gallons we used pure sulfuric acid in 500 gallons of water. And before we got it worked in good, it
started raining. And it muddied this thing up and the darn mud stuck to the tires of the truck
and it was really the gooiest mud you’d ever seen. And then we ran this pit run rock in here
out of a pit up above, and it was 8” minus. And we eventually put the crushed rock on top of it.
But right up around the corner . . . we never did get pit in here, or any chuckholes. Right here
. . . we built the road in ‘63, and in ‘74 or ‘75 I replaced this culvert right here. The old one had
plugged and I couldn’t unplug it. And when I dug through here with a back hoe, I was expecting these big rocks and real hard digging. And the ground came out of here like big pancakes.
And there wasn’t a sign of a rock in it, it looked like brick. And the sulfuric acid, as near as I
can think, had broken down that rock.
Do people still use that technique?
No, they have other ways of doing that. I never took soils, but I think the idea [was that] it
made it compact closer together. But it also broke down and made it kind of homogenous
material.
Before we forget, we just went through that arboretum. I wanted to find out a little bit more about that
back there.
When we go back. . . . That flume that came up this creek was on the other bank of the creek.
On the far side?
Outside. Here. And I never did find any on this side.
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Do you recall any names associated with the mill down there at the intersection or this one up here?
No, I never knew any. Only that kid said his grandfather, and I don’t remember his name. But
right in over there beyond that bigger tree is where I can remember the flume structure being intact yet in 1963. You find out that those old structures, once you disturb them, they can
disappear almost overnight. Just rot down to the ground.
What do you think causes that?
Just the rotting process that’s going on.
Okay, we’re on the west fork of Oak Creek?
Yeah, this is the west fork of Oak Creek.
How has this changed through here from what you can remember?
Well, I did a shelterwood on that hillside and interplanted underneath it all. Kind of an experiment of my own. We rigged up a west coast tower right here on this landing sky line and cable
yarded that down trail with about 3/4’s, down through there. Came across the creek with it
suspended. Now you can hardly see it. This trail is the . . . old road to this mill. Where they
flumed lumber and they got in and out with the equipment. I don’t know exactly how much of
that understory floating survived.
The understory plantation?
Yeah. I see some of it.
Could that be natural seeding that’s just coming up there?
Could be some, but we planted it. We can go over there and find out.
Who planted that?
Students. I supervised the planting of it. Think I planted a little. There’s a washout.
Can you remember very many washouts? Is that pretty common up through this country?
Yeah. Common. The nature of the ground.
Do you think logging increases washout? Does it accelerate the process?
Yes, if you do it wrong. If you do it right, it doesn’t hurt it. You have to study your ground. Like
this big slide they had up on the back of the hill, I did that. Trying to fix the situation between
me and the four-wheelers. We salvaged that hilltop. When we finished, I went down, putting
in waterbars on a dirt road about every 100 feet. Big waterbars. And then they came down and
hit the rock road and down around the corner there’s a place . . . I cut a waterbar in there that
you could drive over. And that was one that wasn’t gonna give up. Well, the four-wheelers over
the next 10–15 years had got in there and cut out every waterbar and in ‘64 when that flood
hit the water came from the top of the hill down and through all these failed waterbars and
the only one that didn’t fail is the one on the rock. Dumped all the water off on a steep hillside
and the big thing gave away and it went a half a mile.
How many acres is that, about?
Oh, half of an acre, estimate? A tremendous amount of dirt, you’re looking at 100 feet across
and maybe 50 feet out to this way, but it broke off at about 15-20 feet deep, and — FOOSH!
— it turned to butter or soup.
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Do you think mountain biking caused that stream to follow the old road?
Well look at it. It’s running down the road. Now whether that’s hurting anything; it’s not, right
now. But that type of thing, if you get that started and you get a big bunch of water [that]
drops down here and that saturates, if there’s any place that’s going to fail, it’s going to be along
those saturation lines.
Well, we can see by this drainage here that this road’s been here for 70 years, but it took the mountain
bikers to divert the stream.
Well, yeah. We logged up this. Used it for a skid road once. And we put it to bed when we
got out of it. You see that _____ ground running out here between these two streams? I have
an idea this all came from a slide at one time. I’ve found timbers down, six foot in the ground
there. As far as the location of that sawmill, it changed so much that . . . There’s a big iron
wheel down here, let’s see if we can find that.
So the mill was built out here on the toe?
Yeah, it was built . . . I was thinking up against the hill but . . . that may be it yet. Yeah. There.
As these things mature and they get disturbed . . . There it is. These fire bricks, these have been
moved. They were down in here. This is a place I’d like to see them do a dig.
So we’ve got an old mill site here with fire brick and an old wheel.
This was obviously somewhere in here with a boiler, maybe under the slag. And the flywheel
that . . . I think they ought to haul this flywheel down and put it in front of Peavy. But it’s not
anything that the ordinary citizen is going to tackle by itself.
You don’t think the two of us should take it out today, huh?
No, I have an idea it weighs a thousand pounds.
How about this depression here?
Well, I think this thing right here is probably where the boiler and the steam sat and I don’t
know how they drove it out this way.
How about that old metal over in there? Is that new, or is that part of the old structure?
Where do you see metal?
Up where we’re . . .
No, I think everything you find here would be part of the old structure.
And there’s some wire rope right there. There’s brick everywhere through here.
That looks like, that’s a fire brick isn’t it? This one right here? You got a fire brick. See the fire
pit was in here, they built it right on the ground, I imagine. And you see these layers, leveled
off things, that’s part of the mill structure some way. Here’s an old barrel here, again. Cans.
Now, what do you think about that type of research. What they call historical archaeology, where they
come in here and research the history of an area. Is that compatible with forest use?
Oh yeah. No problem.
Do you think that’s a reasonable use of Mary McDonald’s income, archaeology?
Here’s an old cable. Well, you see one of the things we have to look at to use a resource wisely
is how they used it in the past and what the effect of that use was on it. And then you get a
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real guide where, “hey, that was a no-no,” or “hey, look it didn’t hurt to do that.” So studying
what we’ve done in the past, and maybe the things that happened 200 years ago or 100 years
ago are more important part of the research than you’d find if you could study a little bit of it
right now, and you could pick up a wide part if you could follow it through time.
How much do you think this canopy up here, this hardwood canopy has to do with the mill, and how
much to do with this erosion?
Well, I think it all has to do with the mill. You open up bare ground, over on the coast, or anywhere you get real bare ground, you get alder coming in on it faster than anything. And I think
you see everything that was open to bare ground has come into alder. We’ve had some of these
massive land failures right here, there’s one right there, and there are several up this road and
off over that way on this slope above us you’ll find a bunch of them. And I think we had some
very large mass landslides sometime in the past.
We’re coming up in madrone . . .
See where this one came out down here? Where they came down and blocked the creek and
then the creek washed through it. And there you see a stump, way down in there below. And
so that’s pretty well alder. We see things like this big old stump here. That was the type of
tree that was here in the past, and there’s a cable wrapped on that stump, it was used for some
kind of anchor.
Now, is this the first we’ve come into madrone on the forest here?
Where’d you see madrone?
Right in through there.
Oh, yeah. Well, that’s the first I’ve seen. Do you see it on up this slope?
Yeah.
You don’t often see it down in a place like this. This is obviously some kind of an excavation
by humans.
Yeah. Do you think this is probably an old road bed or some kind of logging storage, or something?
It looks like it . . . it might be some kind of road bed. It could be that they were bringing the
logs in up here to that mill.
Uh huh. That goes all the way to the mill up there?
Yeah, it goes on up there.
I’ve got a question. Do you think that that’s a reasonable activity for forestry students? Do you think they
should be involved in this kind of archaeology, or do you think there should be cooperation between the
departments, where maybe history or anthropology [comes] in here and does research on this kind of area?
Well, probably the cooperation. But I think that some way in the education of the forestry
student they should get the awareness that when the see something like this they recognize it.
And I say, usually the guys that drive in, you can see in here obviously we had Douglas-fir
down close to the creek. Where, that stump down there, it was a Douglas-fir. And, although
there are some close to it now, but now the alder and—there’s a cottonwood in there.
Yeah. And we just passed a cherry a little earlier.
Yeah. So the hardwoods have filled in here. This slope up here has really not been harvested.
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I don’t think they . . . I think it was too young for them to log back there. But they may have
logged it and it might have come up afterward, too. I do see some stumps in there. And how’d
they get it down here, well it was horse-logged for sure. And as steep as this is, they may have
had a hi-lead machine in here—a donkey yarding into it. If you did some scouting around here
… now they had the fire in 1949.
That’s one thing I wanted to ask you about.
It burned to right here.
This eastern most?
Well, it came down the slope from above. They were burning slash up there and it came down
this hill and it burned into this canyon here, and it ran that way and it ran all along the top of
that ridge over there. But it didn’t come down the draw. It ran off up in places through that
timber over there, on the north side where they logged it, burned it clean.
Did they give that fire a name?
No, it was just slash fire. That fall they had the fire burning all the way from Coos Bay to Columbia River. There’s another piece of cable.
That looks newer. Must have come from one of your operations.
No, I don’t think we were up here with that type.
What is that, about 1 inch cable, ¾ inch?
That’s 1 inch at least. It’s broken.
That looks a lot newer than World War I, though.
Well, it looks that way. I don’t know how it would have got here otherwise. There hasn’t been
any logging activity down in here, except for little tractors that would use a lot smaller than
that. I don’t know that we got into this. Right up around the corner, up this way, I found, a
hollow log that I figure a bear had lived in using it as a ...
So, were you telling Royal that you found one area where you thought a bear had holed up? That’s right
up in this draw here?
Yeah, right up that. I found bear sign in here quite often. In fact, on top of the ridge here we
had girdled young growth. That’s the only place on the forest where we had any girdling, taking the bark off. Right up this way.
Now you also mentioned hearing cougar.
I found that a mile north of here.
Just a mile north of here?
I was sitting right up here on the ridge one time looking out this west property line, and saw
two silver fox kits playing around a stump.
Silver fox?
Yeah. Just running up and down, jumping on the stump and jumping on each other just like
dogs playing. Just as silvery as could be. Long tails, bushy long tails.
How about flying squirrels? Have you ever seen . . . ?
Oh, yeah. Flying squirrels are all through here. When we were logging, thinning in there,
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every once in a while you’d disturb a flying squirrel nest. I’ve seen flying squirrels in a stump,
nesting in a stump as low as 5.5 feet from the ground.
About 5-1/2 foot?
Yeah, actually, the nest was a foot and a half off the ground.
Now, all these old stumps in here, this is from when the mill was in here, isn’t it?
Yeah, this is from the mill. I don’t remember seeing these cables like this before.
Now, that looks like a groove worn in that rock there, doesn’t it?
That is. That’s a cable run on that. That would give you an indication that they cabled yarded.
That’s a line come over that for quite some time.
Well this might not have been horse-logged in here. This could have been a real early highlead.
Well, it could have been a combination, too. Lot of times on these things they used horses to
pull the lines out and what have you.
This has got to be one of the earliest logging jobs here in the forest, yet we’re seeing all kinds of signs of
diversity. Do you think that’s related?
Well, loggers have always been diverse!
Well, not the types of logging, but we’re seeing cherry and madrone and yew wood.
Oh, well, yeah, probably related to the condition it was in when they left it. They didn’t have to
restock; nature did almost all of it. I might talk about these three trails. In 1974 I was in Switzerland, and Switzerland has a system of walkways they call “Wanderways,” that lead from the
cities through the forest and they’re posted. You can get maps that show where they go and
how long it’d take you to walk and what you see there. And I thought, man, that’s a good idea
where you’ve got McDonald Forest so close to Corvallis there and off of north 29th you could
just come right up the hill and develop the trails. And I proposed it to John Beuter and the
dean, and they kiboshed it. They didn’t want it.
Not at all?
No. And what they did, by default, they let them do this kind of stuff. Because they didn’t do
any recreational planning, now the mountain bikers, they put a trail where they want to put
a trail, and we don’t have any control over it. If we come out and tear it up now you’ll hear all
kinds of growling.
So you think these trails were put in, but if they’d followed your suggestion and put in a trail plan and
developed it . . .
Put in a trail plan and developed it and then they’d be where you want them to be and not
where they want to be. And you could put the interpretive things in, we’d have had an excellent
change, we’d have the Department of Recreation, Forest Recreation Department was a major
department, and I was working with Kent, what was his name?
Kelly?
Kent Downing! He was a recreation professor who was doing inventories of forest use with
students, questionnaires just like they’re doing today. And we had some places, key places,
indicated they used a lot and how they liked to use them and things to build on. And as a logging engineer, I mean, I was perfectly understandable that that’s what we ought to do. Well, as
forest economist, John Beuter figured it was too much.
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But looking at it from an economic standpoint, do you think that by controlling where people go in the
long run, that that might be a good investment?
Not only would it have been a good investment, it would have saved us millions and billions of
dollars in the United States if we’d have been doing it all the time. We wouldn’t be faced with
the spotted owl situation and the marbled murrelet and all this garbage that preservationists
go at us with if we’d have done a better a job at relating them to the forest to start with. But I
don’t believe the spotted owl is an old growth habitat. That is spotted owl habitat right there.
Eric Forsman found his first nest he studied right down here within 400 feet of where this
flume went from this mill.
Now, they claim there is no spotted owl on the forest right now.
Well, I don’t know. There was when I left in 1986. Whether there is now, they logged pretty
close to where the one I knew was. But I’ve seen spotted owls on the forest—mostly on Dunn
Forest. And I’ve seen them close to the logging; I see them in the second growth stand. I saw
a pair of them, just the day that we were taking our overstory off and I was walking on ahead
of where they were falling. And there was a pair of spotted owls [that] got off the ground and
flew up and off, and I followed them and just kind of watched them. And they flew again, and
flew again. I went about my business and when I came back, they were sitting on the ground
where they were the first time. I couldn’t identify anything on the ground that they were there
for; there was nothing that they were eating. I couldn’t see any disturbance. But they were right
back to the same place.
Have you ever seen other types of rare birds, or unusual birds? Have you ever seen bald eagles?
I saw a golden eagle.
A golden eagle.
Right up the hill from the other sawmill. I’ll show you where I saw it.
Okay, what they call Dimple Hill now, that area?
No, just on this main road. Migratory, for sure—just going through. But it was sitting on a
limb right alongside the road, and I identified it with the gold head. And when he took off and
flew out, he went down the road and just filled the road! Big wing span, bigger than any bald
eagle.
Do you know Don Dickey?
No.
Okay. Do you think something like this could be . . . Wow! Another . . .
Now that’s half a wheel. Big wheel.
Yeah. Now they used to have leather bands or something on them didn’t they?
Yeah, they used leather on those, and these here came in half pieces that bolted together here.
And they’d pour a Babbitt in these for a bearing.
Do you think interpretive stops could be integrated with a trail in something like this, or do you think it
should be put aside and used for archaeological students?
Well, how are you going to keep people out of it? They’re here already. If they’re going to do
anything you better go along with them as much as you can and make it an interpretive spot
and find out all you can about the thing—like you’ve got some material on who built the
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flume, that original deed of where it was going down the river, and [that] this was the start of
it. And some signs in here.
How about vandalism or maintenance?
Well, the vandalism is a real problem. Maintenance, I think they’re getting into where they
could afford the maintenance.
Maybe student labor or something?
Look at the top of that grand fir there. Yeah, students, we hired, you’ve got all kinds of students
here. They’ll work, especially if they’re going to keep the recreation thing going to give them
opportunities to develop stuff and put their ideas to work.
Do you think the people we have in there now are more receptive to that kind of development?
Yeah. Yeah, they are now. Bill Atkinson is and of course they’ve got two full time people working now on recreation haven’t they? I would have developed the trails. I think I’m better able
to develop trails than those women down here that probably haven’t had any experience in
engineering, she knows what you can walk and that’s all you need to know, and we could have
engineered these trails out.
Well, you know the soils here and you’ve built roads all through here.
Yeah.
Do you think they should have her working with somebody maybe from engineering, or something?
Well, I think she’s getting some valuable experience and I think as long as they supervise it . .
. See, you can see this thing here. Now that berm there, that was a mudslide that came down
here. It didn’t come off of there, it came from way up there. There were enough slides up here
to just fill the area we’re in here now. And the creek cut through the middle, I think down in
here. I’m trying to remember, I think down here is where I saw a plank sticking out of it.
Okay, and you said that plank was six feet under the soil.
Yeah, way down under the soil. You see, that’s down to bedrock there now, and that’s probably where the stream was to start with. The stream doesn’t want to go up on top of dirt when
there’s this type of material.
Well, we’re looking at an old . . .
We’re looking at an old plank. See, it’s flat there? It goes right back in underneath the soil.
So you’re . . . three, four feet of soil.
But see, that wall is a lot steeper than that back this way. This is almost down to bedrock.
Does that look like . . . that doesn’t look like natural rock there does it? Is that squared? That could be
natural.
Probably as natural as any rock here.
Is that the same board you’re talking about? Or are there enough boards that . . .
Oh, I don’t know. I remember seeing one here, and that was definitely a board. I thought it was
on up the creek and . . . at the time I saw it . . . it may have disappeared by now. I’m just looking
for stuff sticking out of the dirt. I found this type of thing up at the Blodgett Tract. Find a log
with a cut off end sticking out from underneath ten feet of soil, where dirt already had settled in.
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Well, there are more boards.
That one has broke off on something and has dropped down, right through here.
Right through here?
Well, yeah, where the, one side or the other.
Ah ha, there’s a kind of a groove through there.
This groove, I don’t think people made it, but they put the flume through there. This gives you
an illustration of [how] this ground has been in transition for a long, long time. You see a deal
up there? This probably slid off of that into the creek. When did it do it? It did it 200 years ago
or something. You’ve got these . . . and this tree and that other one were probably on it when
it slid, because they corrected themselves. And this one here has leaned out. It probably leaned
out when it happened.
So you don’t think this is caused by logging?
No, I think this is probably caused by the Indian burning. Every tree that’s like that is caused
by that.
If you’ve got a group of them?
Well, even the group of them. The group of them might have been rode down by snow and
tipped up all at once. Just because they did that, doesn’t mean that it happens from landslide. You
have to look at the ground and see if you can see evidence that something happened there. But,
in fact, I had the experience once on a tour. The SAF student section was putting on. And over
just below the Forestry Club Cabin they’d had some levels of growing stock studied in there,
and they planted 4 x 4, 6 x 6, 8 x 8, 10 x 10, 12 x 12, back in the 1930s, 1936. And in this draw,
in 1940 we had two foot and better of snow in this valley. And right down where they planted
4 x 4, all the trees were turned up like this, any that survived. So they had this long sweep. Then
this college graduate student said, “This ground was unstable and that’s the reason those trees got
that sweep on them.” So after the crowd thinned I went to the student and set him straight.
We rocked most of this road right out of this rock pit on the 6020 Rd.
Okay, so that’s an old quarry right there, on that switchback. Now, will we be going back to what you
called the Peterson place?
We ought to go up there. Somebody’s working up there on that.
Now were looking at a lot of sprouting in there. Lot of hardwood?
Oh, yeah. Bigleaf maple. We treated that I don’t know how many times, but it keeps coming
back. That’s where I get disgusted with these people telling us about monoculture. You never
get it. That’s what you might aim for, but you never get it. You don’t have to worry about monoculture, especially with bigleaf maple. And Eric Forsman’s spotted owl nest was about halfway
up that slope right there, just almost straight ahead of the pickup, maybe a little bit off to that
side from the pickup. And the nest up there was in a broken-top tree, it was probably 24-inch
tree or 30-inch tree and it was broken off at about this, and it had turned up and grown a
couple of tops up from that.
So it was just a second-growth tree with a broken top?
Yeah, basically. I’d say 100 years old or so, it was not 200 or 300. There is a strip of old growth
along that slope.
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Was he looking for spotted owls?
Yeah. I don’t know when he got started on the spotted owl bit, maybe when he was doing his
bachelor’s degree. And he just spotted one over on the head of Oak Creek, by the big clearcut
we did over there. And when he came back (he went in the military or something), and he
came out and we’d clearcut where the spotted owl was. And I can remember him coming into
Bill’s office . . .
Bill Davies?
Yeah. And saying, “You cut that where the spotted owl was!” And he started looking and he
found this one here, and he’d also found one over by the boot. At the time . . . and this one here
is the one he studied. He rigged up ropes so he could rig up and climb trees around it, and
took picture of it, right into the thing. I saw three pictures, when he had his seminar; this is the
one that he showed the most of.
What did you think about the quality of his work?
Oh, he did an excellent, excellent study up to a point, and from there he lied.
You think so.
Yeah.
We’ve got this on tape.
Yeah. He lied. He said that the spotted owl habitat was a multiple story forest and he found
the thing with some old growth associated with it.
We’re looking at an even-aged monoculture by most environmental standards, I think.
No, no that’s a two-aged stand. This is a young stand over here, and an older one that way. But
. . . then he came up with how much territory they needed, and they needed a multiple story
forest. They didn’t need an old growth. And then he found one nest on the Dunn Forest in a
second growth stand, and he wouldn’t tell anybody about it. He didn’t put it in his research; he
didn’t do anything with it.
How do you know he found that?
Because he told John Beuter about it three years later. And this year, about three months ago,
I found out where it is, because my brother told me. They were skyline logging in there, and
he said this spotted owl’s hanging around their skyline when they were yarding. And I said,
“Where was that?” And he described it to me and it fit where John Beuter and Eric Forsman
were when Eric told him he found it in the second growth in that area.
What would be his motivation for manufacturing information?
Well, his motivation for withholding information is he wants to preserve old growth. Like at
the end of his seminar that I attended, he showed a picture of old growth logs at the scaling
ramp in Philomath, and said “There goes our spotted owl habitat.”
So it’s political?
Well, I wouldn’t call it political. I’d call it his philosophy—to promote his philosophy to preserve that.
So, the end justifies the means.
That’s what I’d say.
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How about Glen Juday? His work on old growth? You don’t want that on there?
I think Glen Juday years ago was either ignorant or lying. There’s no way. . . . I went to one of
his talks for Earth Day, the original earthy day they had on the campus. And I don’t, I’m not a
botanist so I don’t remember names of things, but this purple long-stalked orchid, it belongs to
the orchid family, it’s got a tuber down under the ground. And he was describing this plant to
us there, and said in about 400 years when they got a lot of old rotten stuff down in the ground
this plant came in and it was very important, it fixed nitrogen. And it only came in on the old
rotten material you got on the ground. And here about a week or two later I’m out walking
through a stand and it’s the same stand I told you about, the 4 by 4, 6 by 6, 8 by 8, 10 by 10
plots. It’d been planted by the CCC in 1936, and had been thinned by hand once and with
horse once. And I was walking in that stand—I think it was about the time we were doing
the horse thinning. And here’s this plant he was talking about, growing all through that stand.
Then I got to looking at it, and sure enough, it was growing on rotten wood, it was growing on
all the old stumps. And every old stump, this would be around that stump. Then I got to thinking about that, I’m looking at it, and I said, “You know, I’ve seen that plant in the forest all my
life, and I’ve seen it in all age classes.”
But where they did that planting, that was some old oak savannah, like you were saying earlier. So
that’d be the first . . .
Well, it had had second growth. They’d logged it, clearcut it. It had come up after the old oak
savannah into a stand, and they’d logged it and then they replanted it. They probably logged it
before the university bought it, about First World War time.
Would that be the Calloway Creek Mill?
Yeah, it’d be in that area.
How about the work that Mike Newton is doing on old growth?
Well, Mike’s got his own philosophy he’s promoting. They’re closer to mine. But he’s talking
about you could keep a stand for a long period of time until good growth on it, depends on
how well we manage it. If we keep the rot incident down by taking out the trees that are getting rot in them. Now, with the understanding that there are animals [that] need woodpecker
holes and stuff, for their livelihood, we can leave a certain number of those. That’s a concession
that we’d make to keep a viable multiple species inventory on the site if those species were
important to us. And I’d say we never know whether they’re important a lot of times until later.
So they’re important if they’re there, maybe.
So that’s three different philosophies. One person’s saying that we should grow for animals, one for plants,
and one for timber, for human products. What do you think the answer is?
Well, you need to meld them together. But melding them together isn’t preserving everything.
Not going into a law, because the human species, which Eric Forsmen and Glen Juday are part
of, is going to disappear from the face of the earth if they don’t manage the resources. And
mismanaging the resources is not doing anything, and it destroys it.
Now, you said two of those people in their research you think are dishonest?
Well, I don’t know how I’d say that. I’d say they did dishonest things. They didn’t tell people
the truth. They didn’t . . . true research lets things fall where they may. If Eric Forsman is doing
research and he goes out here and he finds a condition and he doesn’t report that condition,
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he’s as at fault as I am if I’m a chemist and I take two things together and I get a reaction and I
don’t report the reaction!
Well this, as we both know, is an emotional issue. And a lot of these people from the other camp have accused Mike Newton of dishonest information. But you don’t hear it swung back the other way.
I don’t think Mike Newton has done the same type of thing. He has slanted his material as
much as he can toward his philosophy, but I’ve never found him to out and out lie about it.
[There’s a] saw going on a Saturday.
Well, they’re either precommercial thinning or they’re doing some hardwood work up there.
Maybe they’re hitting those maple sprouts again. . . .
[The] flume went right through where the road is. It was probably about at the elevation of
the roadbed on the far side, and it dropped at a fairly steady pace right there. I’ve been down
through there with a cat so many times, I doubt if we’ll find any. . . when we were building the
road we yarded it back up . . .
So that’s an old cat road on the other side over there?
Yeah, we came right down off the point. We’d come straight down, and we’d just yard it back
up the hill. And we pulled up on this side. We did have one skid trail that went down across
the creek. It crossed the creek right in here somewhere. We took the logs and pulled them out
and we got going. The logs . . . we yarded them, had a skid trail that came out on this road just
above this little creek down here. We had a landing. Where was the landing? I think we may
have had a landing right there.
Now they won’t allow that kind of yarding or putting in landings any more . . .
We had a landing right here. Oh, yeah, they wouldn’t . . . you don’t see them after you’re gone a
while. This [is what] we used to call Deep Creek.
Deep Creek, right here?
It was cut way down. We put the culvert in up above. It had a pool of water and it all silted full.
Do you think names like that should be put on a map?
I don’t know. That was our name, I don’t know if it ever got a lot of usage.
Now we’re getting back into the old arboretum area here.
Yeah, this . . . these were planted, I think, but it’s just gradually filled in. These trees are some
that Casey Reynolds planted, the pines and the cedar, the incense cedar, right across the creek
there’s a three or five, six hickory.
What was his purpose in putting in an arboretum here?
Well, they were going to develop an arboretum here that would be exotic and natural, it would
be used for dendrology.
What was wrong with the one at the . . .
The Arboretum?
The Arboretum, yeah.
It was further away, and this one would be more a natural setting, fit in with the other stands
you see here. We can see, too, some pines that really only adapted to that site. They’re dying
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back, because anything but their roots structure can’t fit into that ground good. There are some
down here, see the cedars coming in underneath there?
Yeah. Was that planted or are those seeded?
Oh, those are Casey’s. All these, Casey put in.
Do you think this overstory that’s coming up should be taken out and let these trees go, or do you . . .
No, I think you ought to let it find its own way. You find what’s good there and what isn’t. You
try to open that up and . . . they planted Port Orford cedar over on the west slope of the ridge
north of the TV tower. All through there, and it was down underneath there, scroungy little
Port Orford hanging on. And when we thinned it . . .
It shot right out.
It started coming up. These were lodgepole pine. That, oh, Al Berg used to crow about these
and how they’d survived out there in that grass, it was very important to keep that seed source.
And Al Berg’s gone now and I don’t think anybody ever worries about it.
Looks like these trees won’t be far behind him.
See, they planted it with the idea of planting the lodgepole and then planting Douglas-fir in
the shade of them. And you see that row of Doug-fir, it never made it, and the lodgepole did.
So the Douglas-fir didn’t really adapt to coming under that.
What was the purpose, to provide some shade or shelter?
Yeah, just plant shade. That’s what they . . . different kinds of pine. They’ve got the lodgepole,
the ponderosa, probably, and then Doug-fir, and out here on this side of it, you see the few
Douglas-fir coming in the shade of that one, but the shade [on] both sides was too much
for it.
Is anybody doing a follow-up study here to see which ones of these species have made it and which
ones haven’t?
I doubt it, anymore. I don’t think they [have] any researchers who’d be interested in doing it.
It looks like there’s a lot of naturalized pine out there.
Yeah, they’re seeding. They’re seeding like mad in there, aren’t they?
Yeah. Maybe Al Berg was right.
Well, he had a point. But as I say, nobody’s following it up. And I don’t know that Al did. And
you’ve got some incense cedar, does pretty good on that kind of ground.
Now some of these pines . . .
There was an old road that went on down this way, out to the south fence here, that I had an
idea had something to do with a mill here.
Now we’re at the 6021 turnoff here.
Yeah. And this road, now when Peterson had the homestead up here, they forded the creek
right down below us.
Straight below the intersection here?
Yeah. Just above that water research lab. They forded that and came up.
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What do you know about Peterson?
Oh, I don’t know anything about him. Just that they lived here in the early days. This road was
a terrible, terrible road to maintain, erosion wise. This ground is highly erodible and of course
you see the grass that’s coming in underneath the stand? It’s a real ally to you. But this ditch
was very deep. And you can see the road is three feet below the ground. Well they didn’t push
that dirt out, it all sluiced out around the road down the mountain and down the Willamette
maybe.
Is this naturally seeded or plantation?
No, these are all natural. See this came up in oak? Some of it up above here, we’ll get into some
plantation. But this was natural. These are lower sites.
You think site III?
Yeah, low site III probably. Right ahead, plantation. That right there.
Right on this first bend here.
Yeah. Those are all plantation. Planted in the early ‘50s I think. I’ll look at my book, at my
stand histories, and see where I got it down from.
Now you’ve got all the stand histories point by point? Now, in Royal’s interview you mentioned having
a map of the Columbus Day storm blowdown.
Yeah, I think it’s still hanging in there somewhere or another. But here again, more of these
lodgepole pines. And for a long time they came up here and cut the Douglas-fir out of the
lodgepole pine! Kept it . . . and there’s some over on this side. And nobody’s doing it now, I’m
sure.
So that was a fairly big arboretum?
Yeah, these weren’t part of Casey’s. These were research studies, these lodgepole pine. And even
at the strip down there, that wasn’t Casey’s, that was research. And I don’t know who instigated
it. Al Berg was part of it.
Now, Roy Silen has been working on the Pine Race Study for some time. Did he have anything to do
with the pine around this area?
No. Well they’ve got this rocked now. This was a terrible mess. There are old landslides in back
here from the early days. Mass land failures up here.
Now there’s old fencing through there.
Well, there’s a fence here but above, on the other person’s property right here there’s a push out
that stopped right here and blocked this road. Right here where these blackberries are. I shut
that down. There was a barn. I shoved it down. Bill Davies had me . . .
The barn?
Yeah.
Now there’s an old chestnut tree out there.
Where’s that?
And a grape back there, and some pears and some apples. Was the orchard bigger than this before?
This was the house.
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Okay. And you call this the Peterson house. Does any house here . . .
Oh, no. You see the age of those trees is probably 60 or 70 years old. It’s been gone that long.
Where did you say that chestnut is?
Oh, let’s see. I think . . . I’ve only been up here once looking at the trees. I’ve been up here with you. That
might be it.
That might be it.
What do you think about these old orchards here? We’ve gone through and identified some of the old
fruits and things, do you think they ought to be rehabilitated?
Oh, some of them should be. If you had a rare one, if they haven’t been sowed somewhere else,
that’s a chestnut.
Yep, yeah that was it.
Yeah, that’s it. I’ll be darned.
You didn’t know that was up here, huh?
No, I didn’t know that. Probably some of these have been, if they’ve got a unique . . . what do
you call it? Lilac?
Lilac, yeah. Yeah, that’s got to be near, part of the old homestead.
Yeah, you see the house was right there. So this fits it. And I say the thing about these apples
and things, is that there’s some, if they find a species or something about to lose, I think they
ought to hang on to them.
Why don’t I take your picture over there next to that chestnut tree? I stumbled on one of the few trees on
the Forest you don’t know! This is what we used to call an eating chestnut.
Well, the problem is it doesn’t have a pollenizer.
Is that why there are no nuts?
There are no nuts, they need a pollenizer. Once in a while we’ve found them [to] self pollenize.
See there it is, there are no new nuts. It’s an American chestnut probably, because these nuts
are small and the European chestnuts are big. They’re like this.
It’s an interesting orchard here.
What’s that over? Oh, that’s an alder over there, or something, isn’t it.
It might even be a birch. Might have been planted. Okay, so there was a barn?
Well, the barn was up there at the fork of the road, and right here, built off over this side hill
there was a shed that was probably 20 or 24 feet this way and 36 feet long. And it had a place
where they’d come in on one end with a car, and then it had little rooms in it, like a storeroom,
workroom, and maybe a kitchen, or I mean a chicken house on the end of it, and there was
storage underneath it.
So there were three buildings here? The house, the . . .
The house, I’ve never seen the house. Now, I’ve seen the pieces of the boards.
Okay, this lumber here. There’s some metal there.
Metal. And right underneath this . . . now, I found the trail that led to the water at one time.
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Here’s barbed wire.
And there’s another piece of board I just stood up on edge there. I used the Koller crew [OSU
College of Forestry student logging crew] to log in here, that’s who thinned this stuff. And the
trail led down here and I found a spring. And I was trying to identify a trail, but I haven’t spotted it.
We were talking earlier when I was out of tape about the Peterson homestead here, and we were talking about interpretive trails. And you mentioned that maybe it’d be low maintenance to put in numbered posts and things for interpretive purposes. Can you see, like a spring trail connecting Peterson
with the mills, that type of thing? Is that what you were thinking?
Well, this would be a good idea. They’d come up this road and wander a trail down here to
that spring and across. I mean to that sawmill, and go by the spring, if they could identify it
again. It was right here somewhere, and you may find that spring. And then there was another
orchard there on this side.
Okay, now we never inventoried this orchard over here. That orchard over, the one you just pointed out
there, is that associated with this homestead here?
Yeah, you can see it right above this.
Okay. When you were working here did people use these orchards for like breaks, lunch breaks and
things, eat the fruit of them? Or did people come up and pick them?
Oh, anybody that knew about them. We used to pick stuff up and take it home when we were
around the area.
Would people hunt in the orchards?
Oh, I suppose. If I knew they were there and there was hunting, I would be looking for it.
Is this the headwaters of what you were calling Deep Creek?
No, that’d be one on the other side of this. This would be, this creek comes down to that landing we parked on. That’s just down there about 800 feet.
So we’re just above the landing, okay.
I think this somewhere is the area of the spring. I see something already here.
Yeah, it looks like an old dish?
Broken dish.
Let me grab a picture here, too.
You’ll find a building site or something, too. But if they built there, they needed water. You
start thinking, well, however did they get water here? Probably have to return another day, we
won’t get it all in one.
Yeah, yeah. Now you said the shed they had here was still shedding water?
Yeah.
What kind of shingles did it have?
I think they were cedar shingles.
Was the barn, now that was still standing?
Yeah, I shoved that barn down. It didn’t leak in places, but it had a lot of leaky spots, like you
get where your parts would be totally exposed and parts wouldn’t be.
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Was there any photographs or anything taken of these structures?
Not that I know of. I was under instructions when I get to these things to get rid of them.
Do you think that was a good policy?
Well, Bill was worried about hippies moving into them. And they were having people move
into them and get to smoking pot, and they’d worry about fires in the summertime and they
didn’t want people using them, seeing them there.
If you had it to do over, would you do anything different?
Oh, I’d try to take a picture of it. You couldn’t have preserved that thing and made it usable for
a very long period of time. It was one of them that was settling into the dirt.
But a photographic record or something . . .
Yeah, a photographic record would have been ideal.
Yeah, I’d walk the ground ahead, for miles ahead, and criss-cross it and look for stuff, problem
areas and things that were emergency jobs that ought to be done quickly. Then I’d go in and
talk to Bill about what I saw. And go back out and keep on working. And our first management plan for the forest was two sentences long.
Was that the ten-year plan from 1959?
Yeah, it was to start at the north end of the forest, and do everything that needs to get done
until you get to the south end.
Was it written down or just spoken in two sentences?
Well, that was just Bill’s statement: Just start at the north end and thin and salvage everything,
do everything you need done until you get to the south end. And try to get there in ten years.
And some of these things that we were doing then, his philosophy, and of course mine at the
time, and I still lean heavily toward it, is to take the little patches of trees that blew down there
and are leaning and have this cleared out and gone. They wouldn’t be . . . they’d be sold instead
of left to rot. And my attitude now, I mean leaving these here bird trees, I’d leave bird trees, but
the bird tree would be a bigleaf maple.
You think that works as good as an older fir or something?
You look at them, and those . . . out on my farm I’ve got a “live chinquapin snag,” I call it. It’s
got green limbs on it; it’s probably got 20 holes in it that big around.
About four or five inches.
Yeah, they’re like this. And I betcha there’s a rookery of birds that come out of that every year
that’d surprise you. Well, I leave that, it doesn’t hurt me, and if I had a Douglas-fir that looked
like that I’d leave it. But I don’t know that I’d take a tree like this here that’s selling for $400 a
thousand, and it’s got $300 worth of wood in it, or $400, I don’t know that I could really say
my bird population was going to be worth what I’d have to leave that for it.
And you think that you could save the bird population anyhow?
I think I’d build bird houses. I’d try it some other way.
You think a $400 bird house might be a bit much, then.
I think it’s a bit much. I think you’ve got to be economical about those things.
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[Break in interview]
Early ‘70s maybe. Wayne Seim is the director down there now, he was director when they put
those wells in. He’s been here forever.
Now one thing we haven’t done on these oral histories. I’ve talked to a lot of farmers, and Royal has
talked to a lot of the people that were in forestry, but we haven’t talked to Fish & Wildlife people or Ag
people. Can you think of some names that would be good to maybe to do oral histories with them, to find
out what they did on the forest?
Wayne Seim, there, but he’s just concerned with what goes on in that research area there.
How about Ag, say down at Soap Creek?
Yeah, Jim, what’s his name? Retired, the guy that did the early work. Retired. And Jerry Green
lives off Conifer now. He was the herdsman out there for a long time.
How about from Botany or Fish & Wildlife, or . . .
Well, Harold Sturgis was a game biologist for the Fish & Wildlife Department that covered
this area. You can look over the old records of research that went on here and pick up a lot of
that. Evelyn Bulz did some work out here with the pileated woodpeckers. She started some
out here, did some over on the coast. But she’s still working, she’s a name you read every once
in a while on the woodpecker issues. Pretty good work. She’s real aggressive. I’d rate Evelyn
Bulz a top scientist on wildlife research.
And she got her start here on the forest?
She did. She did work on the pileated woodpecker. She worked over in the Ukiah area with
the pileated woodpecker in the pine area. And I never read anything that she slanted, I mean
she told the story like it was. Sometimes I didn’t like the tone of it, but she never slanted anything she did.
You could trust what she came up with?
If she came up with that, see, that’s what she came up with.
Whose work in old growth then? We talked about that a little bit earlier. Whose work in old growth could
you trust, would you?
I’m not sure. Jerry Franklin, but I think Jerry Franklin, this is just personal, I don’t know him
well enough and it’s my gut feeling that he’s slanted his work toward the way he wanted it to
come out. But I’ve never known him to go out and lie about it. I think that . . . I want to go
down here a little bit and then turn around and go the other way. See that tree right there,
leaning? And the next one? And there’s one, two, three—those are all hickory. There’s a couple,
three, out of that cluster that are varieties of hickory.
So that dates back to the arboretum.
Yeah. And that one right there, I was on the grader, and I had a load of junk I wanted to get
rid of. I started out just working right across that flat with the grader, and got within about two
feet of that thing and something, the shape of the leaf or something caught my attention and I
stopped. And looked at that darn thing and didn’t push it over!
Did this arboretum have any name or anything? Did anybody call it anything?
No. If you call it anything, you call it Casey’s Arboretum, I suppose. Casey Randall’s—Casey
Randall’s Arboretum. And he didn’t finish it, because he’d just started it. I think he worked on
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it about a year or two, and just getting the ideas going and he died. He died of a heart attack.
You were in a panel with Glen Juday, and . . .
Yeah, they were going to put on these panel discussions out in the rural areas and acquaint the
people in the timber industry and out where the timber was growing with the truth.
Was this in the late ‘70s?
Yeah, it was during the ‘70s. And they tried to get somebody from the logging industry to
be a panel member. And they’d ask them, and then they found out what it was and they said,
no, I won’t do it. And about three days before it was to happen, they called me. Wanted to
know if I’d go over there and talk about timber from the loggers’ standpoint. And I kinda
knew about it, and I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” Man, look at that beaver dam! They’re really
coming up.
Yeah. We’re just up from the intersection from the arboretum road here.
Looks like they’ve got the water raised about four feet right there at the dam.
Just in the two years I’ve been on the forest here we’ve been seeing an increase in ponding, I don’t know
if populations. And damage to the old orchards. Do you remember anything from that symposium?
Well, I remember that Glen Juday was on it talking about the old growth, and he modified his
stand considerably, because he knew that the timber people were mostly in the crowd. But he
made some statements that I contradicted when I got up. And he was talking about, saving the
old growth because they needed the big wood and all that for future generations. And I said
from the logger’s standpoint, the sawmill’s standpoint, the faster we get rid of the big old stuff
the better off we are.
Do you still believe that?
Yeah. From that standpoint. I’m talking about from the logging standpoint. Because, the
reason is that, if we had all second growth stands, we don’t need the size of equipment that
we need to take old growth out, we don’t have the same problems of getting it out, and the
sawmill doesn’t need the same type of equipment. They can go automated quicker. So you can’t
automate a 52-inch log very easily at all, but you can automate a 24-inch one.
So with all the automation, is that costing jobs do you think?
Well, automation switches jobs from one thing to another thing. It’s amazing that with
things automated we’ve got more people employed in the United States than we had 20
years ago. It switches jobs. It’s hard on people that get displaced, but then they move into
something else and I think with the aggressive technology coming in, it creates jobs, it
doesn’t destroy them.
So it’s more like computer or engineering or manufacturing.
They go to computer and engineering, and then it goes into refining the product. We got a
tremendous thing that we have hardly touched in here in these hardwoods. They mill it here,
some of it, if they can sell it. They ship it to Los Angeles; they make furniture out of it down
in Los Angeles or San Francisco or San Jose or somewhere, and then ship the furniture back
here. When we buy furniture from the East Coast, and this oak is hard to dry but it’s not
much harder to dry than the eastern oaks—the only thing is that they don’t know how to do
it, and it takes so much more time than it does to dry alder, so they dry alder.
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When you were here, the concentration was more on growing softwoods. And we’re standing in a
nice hardwood patch here. Do you think maybe the Forest should concentrate some more on hardwood
growth?
This is probably a better hardwood site here than it is Douglas-fir site. Do you see that Dougfir blew over right there? Look at the tap root on it.
Shallow root.
It’s nonexistent. The root can go down only 24 inches into the ground, because this is shallow
soil, got a clay pan underneath. But the oak and ash, they put their roots down and if we totally
utilized the hardwoods you may find out that they put out more volume per acre on this in
hardwoods than you could Douglas-fir. They don’t grow any good. Go up the slope a little bit
and you get all kinds of Douglas-fir.
Do you think maybe some concentration on hardwoods would be a good function of the forest?
Well, that’s what John and I used to talk about there. There’s an area we’ll go by today, that is a
second-growth maple stand. And we were talking about preserving and looking at making it a
maple stand. One of the problems with maple in management is that it sprouts. The ones that
come up from the sprouts, by the time they get to a merchantable size, they’ve got some kind
of rot in them. Heart rot. red rot, they call it, red heart. And maybe one out of five of them
would be merchantable. But a seedling that comes up and grows, it grows right on up and you
hardly ever have rot in it. So if you come up from seedlings, you’d have probably a good usable
material for everything that comes up.
Do you know anybody that’s done any bigleaf maple plantation?
No. They haven’t because of Douglas-fir. It grows much better, and sells so quickly.
How about the grasslands, or . . . we talked about converting grassland to Doug-fir, but do you think
some of the native grasses or wildflowers that grow out in the open the way they did when the Indians
were here, would that be a valid function of the forest to maintain some of the savannah or prairie?
If it was maintained like this one over here. And you’ve got the problem with maintaining,
that is that the thing is always in transition. And as long as it’s in transition the edge creeps
and moves. And so if you have fire into it you might get the area to move back again, but if
you don’t get fire, the edge creeps in. And to me, managing it is not to keep it from creeping.
It’s to keep it viable. And probably create other areas like it. Almost all these species appear
where the conditions are. They aren’t lost when one area drops out. A mile away you might find
another condition and they’re there. And how they get there, I use the ladyslipper as an example. On my farm I’ve got a stand and when I bought it, it had been a field. This guy I bought
it from said he’d summer fallowed it the year he rented the property, and it was a dandy field.
Well, it wasn’t a dandy field, it was shallow soil and all these humps, but it was sure beautiful.
And I hardly planted a tree on it. But the first year I was there I dropped the blade and scarified it here and there and got reproduction coming, grand fir coming, and now it’s in the stand
about this size.
About 8 or 10 inch. Oh, no, 12 or 16 inch.
Some of it is 16 inch. It’s been 30-some years. But it’s almost all natural. Some of it came
in under oak and I’m cutting the scrub oak out so that the Doug-fir gets through quicker,
and helping it. But last year, I had ladyslippers on the bank in there. And I thought, “Gee,
those weren’t there before, how did they get there?” Well, I got to thinking about it. I think
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ladyslipper seed is one that grows in the duff, it doesn’t grow in the dirt at all. It grows in the
duff. And that seed is probably eaten by a rodent and it goes through its gut. And so wherever
the rodent drops his droppings . . . and he’s been eating on these ladyslippers. Well, there they
are. So the animals, then, you’re talking about the animal population is important for keeping
the whole system going. If you destroy the animals the rodents all go. You don’t want to get rid
of all of them, but you don’t them to overpopulate. And that’s part of management.
Well you hear a lot about these environmentalists. They’ll say, “Well, if we get the wildflowers out of here
they won’t come back.” But then they’re not considering the wildlife population for dispersing them.
The reason I brought you down here. I’m standing in the middle of a horse skid trail. And you
see it going down here in a groove. See, it goes down through here. And then it went up and
crossed the road and went up several feet up that hillside that I could identify at one time. And
it’s caved in, there’s been cat logging through here at times, but down here in this hardwood
there’s hardly been anything to go in for—till there.
What do you think about, these old horse skid trails, they’ll never be here again. And they’re going to
fill in. Is there any function the forest should do as far as locating them or managing them or mapping
them or avoiding them, or?
Well, I think you could make a sample out of some, show where it was and put it on the map.
I think I got this on Royal’s [ Jackson] map. This is one I showed him. But there’s . . . on the
west slope of, there west of the 500 Road along that main ridge, west of the TV tower and
through there, I can still find them in there. They’ve logged through it several times, and you’ll
find pieces of the old horse skid trails. And when we logged in there the first time I found an
old skid road where they’d put two logs with . . . crossed logs with notches cut in them and
the plank between them, for the horses to walk on the planks and they’d drag the log in the
groove. And they drove big old spikes into there and bent them over so that the spikes kind of
kept the cross log from wearing out.
Do you think, say they came in there to manage hardwoods. Do you think something like this they
should avoid? Or does it hurt it?
I would . . . if they want to make an interpretive spot out of someplace on this, either avoid that
spot, I wouldn’t avoid the whole thing. If everyone that you found that was there could be . . . I
mean, you’d have half your forest taken up in the thing if you worried about every one of them.
But there are some of them that are real good examples.
Do you think it’s valuable then what we’re doing, trying to go through and locate these and talk about
them and explain what they are, so that . . .
Yeah, I think you’d want to take it into account in the management.
How do you think . . . what kind of mechanism can do that? I know there’ve been a lot of cases on the
forest here where things like this, nobody knows about them so they just go through them.
Yeah, when they don’t know about them. There isn’t one person in a thousand that would walk
across that thing that would think anything about it.
Yeah, even a person who knew what they look like.
But I’ve been . . . I followed it from the creek. And the reason I even got on to it to start with,
there’s a culvert up there about where it crosses the creek, and I walked out on that culvert to
make sure I had good drainage and I stumbled on this thing, and I thought, “Somebody made a
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ditch for this thing all the way, so the water could really get away from this.” Well, that didn’t quite
tie together, but I got to walking it and I figured what it was and then I found it on the other side
of the road. I don’t know if you’d find it on the other side of the road anymore. And I don’t remember when I first found this, whether it was in the ‘60s or the ‘70s! It was a long time ago.
Do you think . . . now there’s no policy of environmental assessments or impact statements here or anything. Do you think that it might be good to start mapping these and develop some kind of policy along
that line?
Well, I think for your interpretive deal, like I said, if you could identify the one and put it on
this road or someplace where you could have a number and tell them this is where the old logging was. And point out the stumps. See they logged all these hillsides went down to that mill,
and they got down there some way. And I think if you cut across here now you’d probably find
more of those up here. And find your good ones and show this is where they drug the logs, and
have a picture of how it happened in a book. They never dug those ditches, they just drug logs
and then they cut the first log went through, kinda dug a little bit, and the next one dug a little
more, and the next one dug a little more, and pretty soon that was the easiest way to go. Once
it drug through and broke stuff out of the way the next one went easy.
How would you describe this location right here? Well, it’s on Royal’s map . . .
Yeah, it’s on Royal’s map. We’re about a third of a mile up from the junction of the road there.
Okay, and halfway to the creek.
And I think where that hit down there, it looks like to me that they probably floated those logs
down to that mill and that creek, whether they did it by hand or if there’s water back up that
far, or what.
Okay, one more question before we take off from here. We were talking about it a little bit. You said,
where the edges creep, on some of these meadows, you’d have to maintain them, so you’d have to say, put
in fires, or something, like the Indians did, or use herbicides to . . .
Yeah, you’d have to do something to keep them from creeping if you didn’t want them to
move.
Well, is that a valid function of the forest? Should the forest try to keep a number of different vegetation
types growing?
Well, I think it should keep all the vegetation types it’s got going. But I don’t know that would
be a thing that you need to keep them going where they are.
I see. You could go into new areas, that maybe that they’d logged or something.
Yeah. I think when you make a clearcut you basically do the same thing over again. On some
of those, those south slopes, they’re really not, they’re site 4, site 5 even as far as growing timber, until you get it up and cover the ground, because they’re so dry, and such shallow soil. And
some of them are going to stay that way. I’ll show you one today that you can . . . as far as open
oak savannah slopes, if you don’t do anything it’s going to be as long as you and I and the next
generation or two. It’s been that way for 150 years, and there’s really nothing to say it’s not going to be that way for the next 150 years. It’s got some creep going, but the creep is slow.
Out of 15,000 acres in here, and say maybe 10,000 or 12,000 used to be savannah and prairie. And
they’re trying to save all the old growth, maybe I don’t know, 500 acres of old growth or 1,000 acres,
maybe that’s all that was here originally.
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Well, yeah, that’s all it was. The old growth that they’ve got here now, they probably cut some
of it, but basically in this area here, on these ridges the old growth that is here is what was
there before. We cut a little bit of it, but you didn’t…where you don’t have old growth you
didn’t have any trees at all back when the Indians were here. Like in these areas here …. I was
looking off across over on that other ridge over there. I came by here one time and I spotted
a lean-to. Had a metal roof on it. The old road that was here, there was a road here before this
one. It went up this, I don’t know if we should take time, but that’s it right there.
Oh, I see, that cutbank going up to the right there.
Yeah, you can go up there, and you can follow that through to where it comes up to the Saddle.
And where it crossed this little draw, there was a dam just above it, and there was piping out of
it. Now, I . . . when I first, found that, I figured maybe there was a sawmill there, but there’s no
evidence of a lot of cutting there. And I have an idea that it’s highly possible that these people
down here had a pipeline, water supply run out of that and run down here.
Maybe to help sluice the logs down the creek or something?
Well, no, just for their water supply.
Okay, now you have this marked as a mill site on Royal’s map. But you don’t think it’s a mill site anymore?
I’m not sure of that. We called it a mill site because there was a dam there, and a pipe was
there, but when you get to thinking about what was above there, there weren’t a lot of big
stumps up there, above it, which is usually where it’d have to have been.
I want to kind of wrap up that one discussion on the prairie. We’ve preserved most of the old growth
that’s been here for 150 years. It’s still here and there’s a lot of politics and everything else, biology or
whatever, to keep it. But there’s hardly any of the prairie or savannah left. Do you think that those
areas should be increased or just a representative sample.
Well, but the reason the old growth is here, is because the ecology of the old growth, it didn’t
have to be . . . it’s not on the cutting edge of things, it’s on the fading edge. But on the prairies that you’ve got are on the cutting edge. And the activities around the edges there, there’s
always the tendency for this bigger stuff to creep in and take over. And once it goes into it, like
I say, I don’t think you can viably reverse it. There’s a corner right up here, you’re familiar with.
Was it a DLC . . . well it wouldn’t be a DLC corner, but an original land survey corner?
This is a quarter corner, I think, right here.
Okay.
I didn’t even bring a map.
Just a brass capper?
Where’s the yellow tag? Oh, let’s see, there used to be a yellow . . .
There’s a bunch of blazing up ahead of us there.
Oh, that don’t mean nothing. That’s . . . those little white things are the cruise . . .
Here’s a metal post.
Yeah, that’s just marking the culvert.
[Break in Interview]
Hmm. 1956. Brought here.
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Brought where this alder is here?
Well, up to the little clearcut in it. We did a thinning. Did I tell you about the golden eagle?
Yeah.
It’d sit on that limb right there. I drove up here, it was in the road, and it got up and flew up
and landed on that thing, and I sat here and looked at it and it got nervous and it turned and
went back down the road.
Just 15 or 20 feet from you, then?
Yeah, I mean I was just sitting here looking at it, and “Man, that’s a big bird! And it’s not a bald
eagle. But it’s golden on the head.” And I went home and we had a thinning sale that this little
road that went down across the creek right there, our landing was right there. And, see in these
things you talk about managing the stand, whether you’re managing the darn thing or not. Then
there’s a big tree that blew down out there that woods, and when I was logging in here every
year we went through and picked all that stuff up at the same price that we did everything else.
And that went out. I could turn the skidder or crew loose and they could put as much wood on
the landing picking that stuff out, or almost as much as they could and if I’d run into difficulty
on it, I just billed a little time of labor time onto it, told Bill what we were doing.
Do you think all those repeated entries did any damage, or do you think not having that fiber there hurt
anything?
No, I wouldn’t even think it was missed. We leave enough wood fiber on the ground when we
take the merchantable stuff. We leave the tops and the limbs and the stuff you’re leaving about
80 percent of the wood fiber that ever was there stays on the ground anyway! That thin that
comes out isn’t the whole deal, you got the needle drop and the limb drop that’s on that thing
for 80 years. There’s stuff on the ground. You’ve got your tops and your roots and everything
that’s left there when you take that out.
We had a forest biology teacher, I kind of want this on the tape, teaching the kids right now that once
they logged the ground and they clearcut it, they took out all the wood fiber. It had to be pointed out to
them that there were roots and stumps left behind that was pretty large amount of volume going into
the soil there.
Not only that, all the humus that’s created to get up to that point. The needles last three years
and never more than four years, on hardly any of these trees. And do you know how you can
look, some of them last longer than others. I mean, on Douglas-fir, you might have some that
lose all its needles in two years. I mean, hold them two years and the third year they’re gone.
And some of them hold them four years. Well, you can tell looking at that tree right there
how long the needles stay on that tree. You see, the only place the needles grow is when this
bud is developing. So there are needles—there’s one year’s growth, there’s two years’ growth,
and there’s the third year’s growth, and there’s the fourth year’s growth, and there are needles
hanging on back there to the fifth year. But there aren’t any in the sixth year. And so, you give
this thing a life of a stand needle drop, and if it held them five years, and dropped them, that’s
unusual holding them five years. Then they drop off and the only ones you see are the last
five year’s growth of greenery up there. All the rest of it, 70 years of them, have dropped on
the ground. And all the little limbs as you start pruning out like that, all the limbs and stuff
drop on the ground. If you didn’t manage this stand, you would find that there’s a tremendous
amount of debris [that] drops on the ground, as it comes up. You start with 400, 500, 1000
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trees to the acre, by the time it’s 50 years old, you’re down to 200 or 300 or whatever, and at 70
years you’re down to less, and where did that go? It went this way.
How about the argument that having those big logs laying there creates these micro climates for certain
salamanders and stuff?
I think that our log debris that develops even in logging provides that thing. I’ve found them,
go out in my own field and I find those critters in it.
If you’re talking about a bear log though.
Bear log, how many bears have we got? How many bears do you want in this stand? We don’t
want too many of them, because you build a bear population in here, you’re going to have
people all around the fringe crying and moaning and groaning, the bears are going to be in
their garbage, and there’ll be problems. You don’t want bears, you want them back in the hills.
How about these artificial snags they’re creating out there? They say those are supposed to last 50 or 60
years.
They’ll last 100 years [unintelligible]. They’ll be here until the next generation and the next
generation. But I never shot any tops out while I was here. I left trees that were uneconomical
to harvest and my crew came along and shot them off the year after I left. They were wanting
me to take the tops out all the time I was here, and I didn’t believe in taking the tops out. See
this one here? Nobody took the top out of that, that blew out on its own.
So do you think this idea of making snags is . . .
Well, I think it’s a little bit on the far-fetched side of . . . let’s see, what am I? Look at all the
wind blow right here, that you could pick up. You want to let that stuff rot? I can hardly believe
it. There was a pioneer road
. . . over to King’s Valley?
Yeah. And down the Baker Creek and there’s an old road that goes right down, just along the
toe of this slope, around, hits the creek down below here just about where the clearcut is. And
right down there at that point there is an old plow, steel plow, with a big log chain thing tied
on to the front end of it. I have an idea they were using that plow to build that road.
That’s the one that comes up from Baker Creek there, isn’t it?
Well, it just ends. It goes down to Baker right there, and it ended right there. I couldn’t find
any evidence of it going on any further.
Now this is Starker’s?
Well, see those three dead trees down there?
Yeah.
Those are ours. Right down there in the bottom right below us there, is where that plow is.
And I couldn’t find any evidence of the road going on beyond that. And I never found evidence of a road coming up Baker Creek this way. The only road that’s there was the old logging road that Nicolades and Rooney built in 1950. And I helped locate that road, was the last
problem we did as senior engineers in the spring of 1950. We came out here with Harry Patterson and flagged that road through from Sulphur Springs on up to that T. J. Starker property.
And Patterson told us that that was going to be the road they were going to log on and OSC
was giving them right-of-way.
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Do you think it would be a good idea for the Forest to try to acquire this property?
I think Starker is doing a pretty good job of managing it at this point, and to me it would
make no difference whether they controlled that or we did. I think, in fact, it may be a good
contrast between private management and university management.
It looks like the only difference, from what I can see here is that university management has tops blown
out of the trees!
Well, Starker may do something like that nowadays.
Yeah. Now this trail here, do you know anything about it?
[unintelligible].
Do you happen to know what name these flowers are?
No, I should. But…
February 23rd, they’re…There’s some kind of . . . log down.
That’s a blow down. Somebody blew a big peg in the ground.
Yeah.
And we got a line cut through here.
We’ve got some split in here.
How’s that? Well, that just probably split apart. I don’t know what did that.
No, there’s a bunch of stuff split right here. Somebody’s been doing some kind of work in here.
Yeah, they put a line through here. Probably . . . see none of these have [unintelligible].
Well, let me get a picture of that . . .
What I was looking for, I think it’s right here.
Okay. Oh, this little trail right here?
Yeah, see there’s the blazes?
Yeah.
And this [unintelligible].
So who here …
It come across. See? It was blazed up like this, and . . .
So people could follow these little blazes here.
Well, yeah, if you could find the blazes you could find the trail. Because the property line runs
this way, these aren’t the property line blazes, these are trail blazes.
Okay. Would you mind putting your hand right there so I’ve got a . . .? I’ve got this being recorded, so it’s
…Now this went from the Saddle to Kings Valley?
Yes, this went from Oak Creek Saddle went up to the top of the ridge and down toward Kings
Valley. That’s what I was looking . . . I didn’t think it was so far up on the hill. But see, there’s
another…
Oh, okay. So these blazes are, they blazed the trails through here so people could find it. So what was the
trail used for?
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Well, I just assume it was transportation. Back when they ran horses and walked.
But there wasn’t a wagon road or anything through here?
No, it wasn’t a wagon road, it was just a trail.
Who would have used this trail? Down on Sulphur Springs, there’s a trail down there that goes to
Kings Valley from there?
Well, I think what they were doing was back in those days then had to go down and buy a few
staples or get the mail, if they didn’t have a wagon to ride in it was probably a lot quicker coming over the top of this hill. The trail went right up there . . . It was on top of this ridge back
this way. I don’t think back here you’ll find anything except possibly blazes.
Did this trail have a name?
Not that I know of. Although it could have been . . . probably the people back when they used it
had a name for it.
Now we’re on the trail right here.
I think so. I think we’re on the trail.
Of course, we’re not next to a blaze, that’d be.
I think in the dark you’d find it better than in the daylight. It’s harder. You can feel it right
here, there’s a good level spot. Seems like it went right through here.
Why would you say that you could find it better in the dark than the daylight?
You can feel a flat spot. It looks like it went right out through that way, on the “cougar-kill”
road.
Cougar kill?
Yeah, right on that next point there, they came out and there was a fawn that had been killed
and half-eaten, and they hide it. Went in and ate the soft parts out, the liver and the lungs and
ate from the back and the hide was rolled up. And I went talking to Harold Sturgis or Francis
Ives about it, said I found this deer kill out there, and what would have killed it? And I told
them how we found it, and he says, “It’s a cougar.” I said, “How do you know?” and he says,
“Well, they go in and they eat the soft parts and then they nuzzle in there eating it, and just
pushing it rolls the hide, rolls them up like somebody rolled it up right ahead of him, as they’re
crowding into the meat.” It was right here. We built this road in 1975.
What do they call it now?
Oh, the 680 road.
How long did you call it the cougar-kill road?
Well, that’s what we called it when they were surveying it.
Oh, I see, as you were first putting it in.
Yeah, the crew I had found the cougar kill and named the road.
When they did the wildlife survey here, when Angela was doing that, she marked down several species.
That’s why I’ve been asking. Like cougar and that, and they put question marks, McComb and the others, they questioned whether there’s any cougar out here at all.
Oh, there’s a lot of cougar here. I get up here on the ridgetop in the wintertime when there’s
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snow on the ground, I’ll find cougar tracks along the ridgetops consistently. Over on the Dunn
Forest and Forest Peak, I found them there every time I was up on top in the snow. I found
cougar tracks. Bobcat, I’ve seen bobcat down there, I saw a bobcat go by the Arboretum. Just
above there. I saw one up on top of the hill up here, a big old female that was nursing a whole
batch of kittens from the size of her tits hanging down, almost dragging the ground. Side
flank just hung down there and the tits were about three inches off the ground.
Now you mentioned silver fox. Did you ever see red fox or grey fox out here?
Not out here, specifically; in this area, coyotes.
Did you ever hear any story of any wolves out here?
The only wolf story I got is at Bellfountain. My son was hunting down there just up Reese
Creek, and he said this animal got up and ran across the front of him and he said he never saw
anything like it. And he described it and it described wolf. He said, “It wasn’t a coyote!” And I
went in to the Horner Museum and looked at the stuffed wolf. It looked just like my son had
described it.
They’ve got the road blocked.
Aren’t going to get through here are we?
Well it looks like you might have a little room there.
I’ve been stuck in California and Oregon and Washington, I don’t think I ever got stuck in Idaho
yet! We were cruising timber down west of Santa Rosa, between Santa Rosa and the ocean. On
an old, [unintelligible]. And the roads went down the ridges and around, and this one road they
told us that if . . . we couldn’t get out on it, we had to go back the way we came in, and there was a
ford across the creek. But they said it was a real shortcut, saved seven or eight miles, but they said
there was a slide across it we couldn’t get across. And Gene and I drove down there . . .
Who is Gene?
Gene Pitts, he was kid I worked with at Umpqua Plywood.
So this would be somewhere between 1952 and 1957, somewhere?
Well, it was about 1952, ‘53. And anyway we decided we’d ford that creek. We had a Jeep
station wagon, four-wheel-drive Jeep station wagon. Just dropped off in the creek and pulled
it up on the other side, 16 inches of water next to the bank. And drove up around the corner,
and sure enough the slide that was blocking the road was just a little sloping too much for
us to think about trying. If we’d have taken our shovels and spent an hour digging, we could
have dug our way across it. Well, we turned around and went back and this creek, like I say,
I dropped off the bank into it. And there was no problem getting off it. But going back, I
looked at it and I figured the best way to do that was hit the bank one wheel at a time, instead
of trying to make two wheels climb that bank—to hit one wheel at a time and just climb up.
And that’s what I did. And the first wheel hit it and it spun. And when they spun, that thing
settled down in the water, the water caught it and it took it sideways. And when it stopped
moving the water was running across the floorboard. And, like I say, we were eight miles from
the nearest people. And it was 10:30, 11:00, 10:00 in the morning. Our gear in the back had
floated . . . the back end of it was so deep in the hole the water was almost up to the castings.
Our gear was in dynamite boxes, floating. And we looked at that darn thing, and we said,
well, the distance we got to walk to catch a ride, we’d have to start walking about 2:00 to get
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the other crew that went out. And we decided we had till 2:00 to get out. And we worked, we
got out and pushed the front around to try to stay dry. And stopped and ate our lunch. When
we got our lunch ate we had it figured out, we just baled off into the water. And we’re talking
about December. Colder than all get out! And I cut me a big pry pole and pried the front end
up in the air and the back end up in the air and dried the motor out with the rags we had. Got
the motor where it’d run.
I don’t know. One thing I wanted to ask you. You ever hear that hill in the middle there called Fogle’s Peak?
That one down at the…
With the planting on it?
This one right here?
Yeah, that one out in front there.
The one here with the planting on it?
No, no, the next one out there.
Way out?
Well, halfway in between. There’s the old Forest Peak to the right, Coffin Butte out there, and then one
in the middle there, that big rounded hump.
Oh, I’d never heard anything but Forest Peak out there.
Anyway, there you are out in the middle of the water in December.
Anyway, we got it dried out and pried up in the air, and we got in and the first rattle out of
the box, the first try the front end jumped up onto the bank. But I couldn’t get it moved from
there. We had an old piece of hay wire.
Lot of people using the Forest today . . .
Yeah. Then [we] tied this piece of hay wire onto a little tree up in front of us. Wrapped it
around the hub on the thing, and went ahead on her, and pulled the tree out. Hooked onto
another one, just a little tree, hooked onto another one, and went ahead on it, and that thing
wrapped and got to wrapping on there, we could have climbed a tree with it then. Used a rope
for a winch and threw a couple of bites out and wrapped on the bites.
That was how you were able to get out on it?
We were out by 1:30 and we went on to cruising timber until 3:30. We got two hours of timber
cruising in that day.
December 1969 - January ‘70, and this is where Eric Forsman had his spotted owl and spotted
it. The first one, and we logged it when he was gone.
Just the back side of what they call Dimple Hill now.
Yeah, we’re talking about that young stand there. And we did that with a Madill, 70-foot Madill tower. And that was the last job we did with Gary Ferguson. When we got done with that
one, he took the tower to Valsetz and split from us.
Was that a pretty happy breaking up, pretty agreeable?
Oh, yeah, it was agreeable. We arrived at a conclusion to what to do. It wasn’t a fight. I
didn’t know why he wanted to take off, but I heard later that he was turning 30 and at 30 he
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inherited this bundle. And we were in the partnership, and his financial advisor, bookkeeper,
advised him to get out of the partnership. Because the partnership every partner is liable for
every other partner’s problems. And I’m sure that’s why he did, but he never said that.
Have you heard that hill called anything other than Dimple Hill?
Mitzi Point.
And that’s the only two names?
Yeah. Mitzi Point, John O’Leary named it Mitzi Point after his dog.
Oh, okay! I’d heard the name Mitzi Point, and nobody knew where that name came from, so you know
where that name came from.
Yeah, he had a dog named Mitzi, and I think it died and they buried it up here somewhere. He
was doing a triangulation. You want a little coffee?
See that was a panorama. The treetops were all below your level.
Okay, now, there’s some pine right here. Are those planted?
Yeah, those were planted in the 1930s. [Unintelligible] planted those pine.
Now, we were talking about ridge trail system. And we’re coming out from Dimple Hill and we’re going towards Lewisburg Saddle here. One of the things is, we can see on all the old maps, that these were
prairies and stuff. Do you think it’d make sense to open some of these up so you can see those old panoramas? Or just wait until they log them.
Well, you could manage them for a viewpoint. We did that around the corner, there, did a
clearcut and left a viewpoint.
Do you think that should be maintained?
Depends on how desperate you are. They’ve got all kinds of views; they can go to the top of
that hill to see the same view. So I can’t see taking several acres and rubbing them off or topping them out or whatever you’re going to do to make it when you’ve already a view somewhere similar to this.
Here in the pine they planted in the ‘30s. Look at the Doug-fir. That’s where most of that ….
Why did they plant pine here?
Why?
Yeah.
Well, they thought it might grow good on these south slopes. It was before the days of knowing that there was a seed source that would be valuable. Most of this pine is susceptible to a
needle problem that’s caused by too much water.
Now this is an old oak savannah in through here.
There was a strip of old growth going up the hill right here. I never figured out why it was
there, or why it is there yet. There’s one down the east slope there. Now right here I had a
west coast tower set up, and you look right down through that slot right there, I had it tailholded across the property line. 1200, 1400 feet down the hill there. And we thinned all that
up through here. In fact, part of that down there I yarded with a cat underneath the skyline.
This is a highly unstable area, around this hillside here. Old growth on it, I think it just stayed
wet and didn’t burn good. 1964, the year of the flood, and all the mass land failures, from right
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down below us here all the way over to that creek there was a crack open in the ground where
it sunk down 12 inches and opened up like this, just along through where those trees are.
But it never went anywhere?
Didn’t go anywhere. This is that wet. You see, all this ground has got that wet.
There’s a creek running right through here. Does that have a name to it?
It goes down into Jackson Creek. Headwaters of Jackson Creek.
Oh, okay.
In ‘46 I was in the freshman engineering class, down in Jackson Place, down below us here, he
took us out in the field. See that road up there? See that post, that white post? He says, “Pace
up there and back and tell me what the distance is.” Look at it now. That means that all these
trees that are there now weren’t there in 1946.
This little slide out right here happened in 1964.
So all these happened about the same time in 1964.
Yeah, in 1964, they happened all the same day. In 1964 we had one of those unusual deals, they
had, I don’t know, something like six inches of rain that fell in a week or two-week period. The
ground was almost saturated. And then we had about six inches more [that] fell in two days.
So it just come down in bucketfuls, and the ground saturated, and if you follow engineering,
what happens when you get a mass failure, you basically, the water builds up along a place
where it can’t go through, an impervious area, and builds up and it can’t get out as fast as it
comes in, and real soon it just lifts, hydraulically lifts that slab off and loosens its friction hold.
Here’s another place where all these pines were planted, down below us.
Was it planted at the same time?
Yeah.
Was that CCC?
No, I think that was college students.
So this is like your last sale?
Treated them maple, left them standing for snags and left all the trees on the site that were
low value lumber. Most of them were just low value. Well, these cookies are a treat. They’ve
got about a cup of sugar in a hundred of them. And a half a cup of molasses. But then there’s
oatmeal and oat bran, hazelnuts, filberts and raisons.
What do they call those now, those health food bars?
Granola type of thing? This stand right here was done at the Columbus Day storm in 1962, it
blew the overstory down and left a scattering of trees and that was coming in as as understory.
So we set a cable, that Bantum yarder up right here, pulled the overstory off, and we hardly
had to plant a tree on that stand.
Now you told Royal that that was about the most significant event in the history of this Forest here. Do
you still agree with that assessment?
You mean the Columbus Day storm?
Yeah.
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Oh, yes. It’s 100-year storm, maybe a 500-year storm. We really only have one other indication of a storm like that on the west coast. I’ve read up on the Olympic Peninsula they’ve had a
blow down that was equal to it.
In 1921?
Yeah. Somewhere way back. But this one hit the whole Douglas-fir region. The time of day it
hit, they hardly lost a life. If it’d hit two hours earlier we’d have all been in the woods.
One thing in school, for a while I kept forgetting, I kept mentioning the Columbus Day
storm, then I realized to most of these kids I was talking ancient history. They couldn’t remember it; they weren’t around.
This slope right here blew down in, I think the fall of ‘50 or ‘51, just almost 100 percent. And
they logged it. They had an A-frame right here on the point, and they called it, this used to be
called the “A-frame Stand.” They used that name on it.
On what, the 630 and the 600, Patterson?
Yeah, it was right back there on that point where the A-frame was set up, and they logged it to it.
Was this the same blow that blew down the Corvallis watershed trees?
No, no, the Columbus Day storm did that. And anyway, this was the first area where they were
successful at getting any kind of control of big-leaf maple. It wasn’t 100 percent successful, but
they did knock the bigleaf maple.
How did they do that?
With an herbicide. And I don’t know what they used. I think it was probably the Agent Orange, 2,4,5-TP or an earlier component of it.
Who was the one that did the experiment on that?
I think George Barnes was the one that started it.
This trail would be the one from Lewisburg Saddle to Baker Creek? To Sulphur Springs?
It came up here on top of the ridge.
Oh, okay. So this would be the one coming from Dimple Hill down to Lewisburg Saddle.
Probably. I have an idea that this goes off over here, to Dimple Hill. I’ve never found it. I
thought they had one that went down into Baker Creek, but I never did find any evidence of it.
What do you think about this kind of work here?
I’m glad that somebody else is doing it.
Why is that?
I think it’s nonsense. I think it’s reinventing the wheel. We know more about shelterwood than
they’re discovering here. But one of the problems, we didn’t document it. And this is documented. But down this slope again, down that draw there, is probably I’d say one of the most
unstable areas on the forest, because it’s part of what we had over there and it continued right
on across here, down through here, and down through this draw. There was all kinds of old
windthrow, just continually windthrowing, and a rather sparse stand. And they went ahead and
made a shelterwood out of it, and they lost about half of what was left of it. You see the root
wads there after the windthrow, after they made the shelterwood. I doubt that they’ll be able
to keep this stuff for any length of time. Up here, this is more stable.
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Now, we’re looking at this area where they’ve done shelterwood and created lots of snags and they’ve
scarified the soil. What do you think about scarifying the soil as a site preparation?
That’s a good deal. Scarifying the soil, you get reproduction coming where you got bare soil,
and you get reduced competition from the brush and the grass for a little bit, if we get it coming. But it’s sporadic, I mean, these trees here may produce cones in a year or two, next year
or so, but whether you get a seed source that throws out on it soon enough before the brush
takes over. I’ve made this type of thing without scarifying, right down there on the north side
of Sulphur Springs Road where they made that clearcut. I did the same thing, back in 1975.
And I got a beautiful stand of brush. Because I had an understory of oceanspray and hazel,
and dogwood and big leaf maple and I let the light into it and it just developed twice the size
almost overnight.
Well, they’ve got a lot of sprouting right here, but they’ve also planted some fir in there.
Yeah, they’ve planted this and also they’ve sprayed these clusters. They killed the top up here,
but they didn’t kill this, this is live. The only problem is, keeping this down till those get above
it. And then they’ve got it made. Let’s see if we can find . . .
Okay. Here’s some old cable. Is this type of logging more dangerous?
Oh, yeah, it’d have to be.
How about the cost?
Well, it’s more costly in the thinning, you get less volume per acre off it, so you got to rig up,
the rig up process is the same on less volume, and then, if you’re going to protect the trees that
are left, you can’t rub them or sow-wash your line around them or . . . you have to get them
straight, and that means you’ve got a lot more time in making the rig up.
That’s one term we haven’t got on one of these tapes yet, is “sow-wash your line.” Can you explain that?
Well, it means rubbing the trees, getting into the bite. You know what a bite is?
Oh, yeah. I actually know what sow-wash is, I just, somebody’s going to be listening to this 50 years
from now and they’re gonna wonder what the heck it is.
Do you know where the term “bite” comes from? It’s a sailor’s term. Being in the bite of the
line, when they were sailing the old sailing ships and they had all the rigging running around,
it was a term that they used there, and it just translated onto landlubbers.
Do you know where the term sow-wash came from?
Probably had to do with the Indians. And I think that sow-wash was a people that were
inclined to pull wool over your eyes. Not tell you the truth. Or that at least the white men
perceived them to be that way.
Now, here’s an old stump down below us on the left here. Is that some of your earlier work?
I don’t think so. It looks new.
It’s pretty new. Got a couple sprouts on it.
I think it’s mine, and I think it’s a handsaw that cut it and not a power saw. But it’s deteriorated to where you can’t see . . . they didn’t need one over here, evidently.
Nope.
I don’t think we’d have fell it down the hill like that, I had an idea, back in the ‘30s especially
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they had, what did they call it, [a] work study program, federally funded. Amazing how some
of these old things can disappear.
Yeah. Was it a pretty clear trail through here?
Oh, yeah, this was like one that had been laid out.
What’s the trail date from? Was it an old trail?
Oh, yeah. I never knew when this one . . . now you say you have records of one going from
Lewisburg over to Dimple Hill?
Yeah.
I have an idea that this trail is the one that goes there, maybe improved by the Forestry students over the years. Back when I was in school we used to have what we called Arboretum
Day. And on Arboretum Day the whole faculty and student body went to the Forest and they
did maintenance type of things until noon. At noon they ate bean-hole beans. And afternoon
they had contests. But from 8 to 12 they did maintenance projects, and it seems I can remember them having a trail maintenance crew there somewhere.
Now you told Royal ten years ago that you thought that the attitude was better, that those kinds of traditions were a good thing.
Oh, yeah. I guess they got everybody to them, and if you didn’t do them you didn’t continue on
in school.
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PART VI: May 8, 1995
[Interview conducted by Bob Zybach at the Forestry Club Cabin, Oregon State University
Research Forests, Corvallis. Ann Rogers and Shahid Islam were present.]
Marv, we are going to resume the interview you have been doing, and I have some questions from the
earlier interviews. To start with, you were explaining the project with John Beuter and how you got
started on the soils and inventory projects, and how you developed some of this information. Would you
describe that process, and what came of it?
When we determined we were going to do an inventory of the forest and needed additional
personnel to do this, we hired Jeff Garver to head up the inventory program. As the plan
developed, we determined that we should identify each individual timber stand on the forest.
They would be identified by age, stand density, and species composition. We set five acres as a
minimum-size stand area to keep track of. Areas smaller than five acres were placed with an
adjoining stand. Second, to keep track of the stands, we divided the forest into compartments
to reduce the map sizes to manageable size. Compartment boundaries were property lines,
roads, streams, and other easily located dividing lines. When the inventory was complete, I began working to create a forest history that recovered every activity that had taken place in each
stand. Every activity we had record of over time was entered into the stand history. I did most
of this work after I retired from the forest manager’s position. I went through the old records
and entered the evidence of all activities—those that were written, remembrance of individuals, and some from observing the conditions in the stand. These stand histories were to be
updated each time an activity occurred in the stand until it was totally harvested. At the time
of planting, a new stand number was to be assigned to the area. This leads to the stands being
dynamic and changing over time, but the compartment boundaries were to stay unchanged.
Did you and John Beuter invent that system of dynamic stands and static compartments?
No, we didn’t invent it. It is basically the way foresters have kept track of forest histories since
they began keeping records in Germany. It is a good way to keep track of changes in the forest
over time.
Was Jeff specifically hired to do that job? What year was it about?
The year was 1980 or 1981. Jeff was hired to assistant forest manager, and his initial job description stated he was in charge of developing a forest inventory. This forest inventory was
under John Beuter’s direction; other management work was under my direction. This dual
overseeing led to problems as time passed, so we sat down as a team and designed an organization chart that clearly defined job responsibility for all the activities on the forest, and set down
a chain of command that was missing in the original job description. This organizational chart
set up areas of responsibility for the forest supervisor, manager, and assistant manager. It set
up a chain of command designating who reported to whom for each defined task, and solved
most of our problems.
When you said this inventory system was based on the German system, did they, so far you know, designate stands like you and Jeff, or use essentially the same process?
I believe they followed a similar plan that designated stands and management plans for the
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stand that allowed for change over time. They made ten-year plans that forecast the operations
for ten years. They modified this plan by conditions that occurred year by year. At the end of
the ten years, they checked to see how close they followed the plan and developed a new tenyear plan—considering the lessons learned from the last plan. Things that changed the plan are
still working today—such as storms, fires, changing markets, new manufacturing techniques,
public needs, and so forth.
What do you think you changed the most from the German methods?
On the university forest, we are education- and research-oriented, and the German foresters
were probably resource-oriented. Our forest manager is committed to manage following the
dictates of the Dean and the State System of Higher Education, as defined by the laws of the
state. The management of the forest developed as the forest was acquired. In the beginning,
the forest was managed by a committee consisting of appointed faculty. This led to problems
because of no continuity of purpose, and was replaced by a full-time manager in 1948 when
Harry Nettleton was appointed to the position. He was an old-time forester whose main duties as a manager had been protection, and protection held a high place in his management
strategy. He was working on a limited operating budget that restricted his options. In the
early 1950s, stumpage was around $5 to $10 per thousand board feet and it took a good-sized
sale to generate enough income to run the forest. This meant he was competing with education and research for operating funds. The management objectives before 1948 were limited
to regenerating cutover lands as they were acquired and harvested as mature stands. Salvage
work to rehabilitate existing stands and thinning young stands were nonexistent. Early trials at
thinning followed the idea of removing the larger trees to give the smaller trees room to grow,
and resulted in weakening the stands to severe wind-throw damage. In one stand south of the
Powerhouse Saddle, a stand was thinned before 1946 using this method and almost 100 percent of the leave trees were blown down in the first winter storm. About 1953, a large sale was
put up for bid and the price was bid to about $40 per thousand board feet. This marked the
first time the forest began paying its way. About this same time, Harry Nettleton began putting up a series of salvage sales for small logging operators that kept a cash flow coming and
enabled him to begin managing on a paying basis.
In 1956, my partner and I negotiated a contract to fall two-thousand snags in an old burn
area with an option to salvage any merchantable wood at $10 per thousand board feet stumpage. The salvage value returned more than the cost of falling the snags. From that date forward,
there has never been a deficit sale or operation, and the forest began paying for research and
education needs.
In the late 1940s, Crown Zellerbach began commercially thinning young Douglas-fir stands
in the Vernonia area. Lessons learned from this work were tried on McDonald Forest beginning in 1956. Harry Nettleton, with the help of Prof William [Bill] Davies laid out a sale in
the Oak Creek area following the guidelines developed by Crown. This was basically removing
understory trees that left the dominant and codominant trees to grow. It removed what they
referred to as the four Ds—the dead, dying, diseased, and deformed, along with suppressed
trees. My logging firm [Rowley and Parker Tree Farm Service] negotiated to log the first trial
harvest on Oak Creek. The following year, they put up a larger sale in the Arboretum area and
advertised it for public sale to the highest bidder. My firm was the lone bidder, and we purchased every sale put up for bid until Harry retired in 1959.
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Did you log through the pioneer research studies in the Arboretum area, or were they excluded?
The pioneer studies you refer to were within the sale boundary. These trees in this sale were
all marked by the forest manager, and they looked at that study as being over—the records
couldn’t be found.
Did you have any markings for the early research plots?
Yes. We knew where they were and we tried to keep the tags and boundaries intact, and no one
from the college ever came to work with them. There was a one-acre control plot on the top of
the ridge that we avoided, to leave as an example of no thinning. This one acre was about ten
percent above the volume predicted by the yield tables. This plot was located near the end of
Spur Road 531. It was 130 to 140 years old and contained 109 thousand board feet. This plot
is located in a stand that was seeded in about 1830 to 1840.
For the records, the plot you are talking about was contained in a thesis by James Keeney, Master of Science thesis dated 1932. You estimated with Royal Jackson that you believe there was never more than
five or ten percent of the forest occupied by old-growth stands. Was that counting some of the old growth
in the Dunn Forest and the stands logged by the Caffall Brothers at the head of Soap Creek?
Yes. There were a few older trees scattered throughout the forest that would meet most definitions of old growth, but the 300- or 400-year-old stands were restricted to canyons, north
slopes, and areas where fires couldn’t burn because of wet conditions when the fires burned.
Examples of this are found at the head of Calloway Creek, north of the Lewisburg Saddle, on
the headwaters of Baker Creek, and West Fork of Oak Creek.
The original land survey notes that the head of Soap Creek had trees in the 40- to 60-inches
diameter class, but only occasionally. They were in the area of 150 to 200years old, at the oldest.
Have you found any trees or heard of any trees, oak or Douglas-fir, 400 years of age or older in the forest?
I think we find a few. In Section 4, T11S, R5W, Willamette Meridian, north of Lewisburg
Saddle, there is a six-foot diameter and an eight-foot diameter tree. I haven’t counted the rings
on those sized trees, but large trees I have counted have all come out less than 400 years old.
Most people who see those large trees believe they are older than they really are. During the
1980s, we had a group of students who called their group the Concerned Students of McDonald Forest. They wanted to preserve the area south of the county road and west of Lewisburg
Saddle because it was old growth, although the stand age was about 120 years. They wouldn’t
accept that age and said it had never been entered, even though I had records showing the harvest date and volume removed. They said there weren’t any stumps in the stand. The old county
road from Lewisburg to Soap Creek ran through the middle of the stand. I ended the confrontation by telling them to come back when they understood a little more about the forest.
Do you think the area the Caffall Brothers logged and some of the areas in the Dunn Forest came up
when the Indians stopped burning in the 1930s?
Yes. I said earlier, there were scattered older trees, but most of the stands originated after the
burning stopped.
This map, dated 1945, made from old aerial photos, shows the patches of old growth we are talking
about, a small patch of five or ten acres. There are two ways to interpret this. One is to say that they are
relics of much larger contiguous stands, and the other is to say these are small pockets of trees that seeded
outwards. Either way can be interpreted from the aerial photos. What is your opinion on this?
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There is no doubt in my mind. There were no big stumps in most of the clearcut areas. The surveyors of the 1850s described McDonald Forest area as open savanna oak forest for the most
part. We have this historical evidence established at that time. If you want, watch the process
of Douglas-fir overpowering an oak forest. It is happening now along the ridge north of the
OSU horse barn and west of 53rd Street. The Douglas-fir is appearing in this stand, where it
wasn’t visible 20 years ago. About 1975, I walked through the stand and found many places
where there were thick stands of Douglas-fir understory pushing their way through the oak
canopy. Back during the 1940s, there wasn’t one Douglas-fir visible in that stand. When the
Douglas-fir overtops the oak, the oak dies. This process may take 50 to 100 years.
Do you think that process is one we should encourage, or is there a way to preserve some of the oak
stands? Or are the oak stands just transitional?
I believe the oak stands are transitional on the better soils of the forest. If we want an oak forest,
establish an oak stand and maintain it by preventing Douglas-fir from becoming established by
burning the understory or treating with herbicides. Don’t try to preserve a mixed stand where
the oak has been overtopped, because the oak has been weakened and will not do well.
Do you think there is any reason or any rationale for turning, or maintaining, parts of the forests into
their earlier condition, such as prairie or savanna as the Indians had, or thick oak stands as the pioneers
had, or young Douglas-fir as it was when you were young?
Education-wise, it is important to have all these stand conditions to demonstrate their requirements to students. I am sure they will be needed for research also. For a research and education forest, all conditions are important, but that is not true of a forest maintained for timber
production. To have these conditions, you will have to create them from scratch by following
prescriptions designed to create them. You won’t have them any other way. Wildfires created
most of them in the past, and we control fire to the point where conditions don’t develop. If
you want to burn in our culture, you need to change the way people think and react to burning.
Do you think it would be a valid educational objective to try to change the way people think or to replicate other cultures’ activities?
It is hard to say what people will accept as far as burning and maintaining open spaces in the
forest are concerned. There will always be some disagreement about what you are doing.
When Royal Jackson interviewed you in 1979, you said the Columbus Day Storm of October 12, 1962,
was a major shaper of the forest that continued to define the management decisions up to then. Can you
still see actions of the Columbus Day Storm in the forest?
Yes. When I think about present-day decisions, and look back in time to identify what action
in the past forced the present decision, it is the major storms that cause or influence the current action. For instance, the Columbus Day Storm was a 100-year storm, one that happens
only once in 100 years. The high winds of this storm blew from about south ten degrees east.
They hit the trees from a different direction than the usual storms, and therefore the trees were
not used to the force from that direction. The trees blew over, either by uprooting or by shearing off near the ground. There were about seven million board feet of timber blown over on
McDonald and Dunn Forests in two hours’ time. There were another two million board feet
lost in the next two years from Douglas-fir bark beetle that built up in the downed timber and
carried over into the live trees as their numbers increased. In salvaging the wind-blown and
bark-beetle-killed trees, we worked around the surviving trees, leaving them to grow. This left
some openings and shelterwood conditions that resulted in understory brush increasing and an
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occasional stand of natural reproduction. These conditions are what I see dictating actions of
today when making decisions about stand management.
What effect do you think the small incremental changes and occurrences have on shaping the forest, such
as small pockets of wind-throw or insect infestation?
They have a small effect, but much of these blend into the management and are hard to see
in a few years. If they happen along the edge of a stand and leave it exposed to more wind,
though, they can have a domino effect that may carry through a whole stand. An example of
this type of action would be black-bear damage to a stand. The bears may girdle a few trees
scattered through the stand to start with, and they are hardly noticeable. But the problem may
build up until 20–50 percent of a stand is affected, and they stand out as a major problem.
Since the early 1960s, our management plan called for removing these small-event happenings
on a yearly basis, so it didn’t leave a place for insects to build up. We salvaged the wood while it
was useful.
Don’t you think the wildlife need this dead and dying material?
Yes, I know they need dead and dying material, but I believe there is plenty of it left for them
in the cleanest salvage work we have done. The blacktail deer are an example of this on McDonald Forest. During the ‘20s and ‘30s, the blacktail-deer population was hunted until they
were getting hard to find. When McDonald Forest was created, they didn’t want hunters
where they would conflict with students doing field labs. So, they signed an agreement with
the Fish and Wildlife Commission to make the forest a big game refuge. By 1950, the population of blacktail deer had built up to the point where most of the Douglas-fir regeneration was
being destroyed. The college negotiated with the Fish and Wildlife Commission to have a controlled hunt on the forest to bring the population down to where the seedlings could have a
chance to survive. As they reduced the deer population, the average weight of the deer climbed
and the percentage of bucks killed increased. With a smaller population, the herd was healthier
and more bucks were surviving the winter. One year, due to a miscalculation, they harvested
700 deer on McDonald-Dunn Forest and thought they had ruined the herd, because the average harvest had been 300 per year. The next year, they harvested 300 deer as if nothing unusual
had happened the year before.
What do you think about the Fish and Wildlife Service introducing species such as rainbow trout or
turkeys?
I think it depends on the species introduced. The introduced species should not hurt timber
production beyond what the native-animal population does. They should not upset the balance
of nature with the current wildlife population.
This creates a new recreational activity in the forest. Is the forest the proper environment for creating
this type of activity?
This gets into politics. Some species and the recreation that goes with them will have no effect
on the wood-fiber production of the area. But others will have a major impact on the ability
to grow trees. I would hate to have a herd of elk move in on my 100-acre tree farm. Even a
small herd would destroy my ability to produce the growth that pays my taxes and helps put
food on my table. I already have a deer population on my tree farm that causes damage to
my orchard and my timber stands that runs $200 or $300 per year. I think a property holder
should have more control over these populations. We don’t, because our laws were received by
tradition from England. In England, the king owned the game animals and this rule followed
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us to the colonies and was adopted by the states. The state controls the game, but in countries
such as Norway the landowner has some say in the management of the game. The landowner
is allowed to harvest game, depending on how many acres he owns. And, I believe, they can
let others hunt their quota. I think they may be allowed to hunt until they fill their quota. Our
game-management people are doing a fairly good job managing the game most of the time,
but I don’t think they pay attention to the landowners enough, and they get politicians making
decisions.
What you are saying runs a little bit against the prevailing thoughts of people now. They say we have
to encourage habitat and game animals that exist in the forest. You are saying we have to encourage
control of the populations?
Yes. I believe, with good forest management, I will have all the species that have existed in that
forest condition, and the population needs to be controlled just as I control the tree species, the
spacing, and the harvest age.
How about grizzly bears and wolves?
I know these species used to be here, but they don’t fit into the conditions that exist now. There
are plenty of species here that do the same thing the wolves and the grizzly bears did. Why
should there be more competition now? On McDonald Forest, we have all the species present
and, as long as we keep a variety of habitats that fit their demands, they will continue to exist here.
The day after the Columbus Day Storm, you told us, you flew over McDonald Forest in an airplane
and mapped the wind-throw areas. And the map was on your map rack for years. Has that map ever
been found?
No. Since I left the office, I have no idea on what happened to it.
You said there were seven million board feet of wind-throw. Would it be possible to recreate that map?
Yes. I think I can recreate the map by looking at the harvesting records and using my memory
of the events.
Did you notice much damage on adjacent lands during the aerial survey?
No, I don’t remember even looking for any. While flying over the forest, I concentrated on the
forest and not adjacent lands. When you are looking at a map and trying to identify ownership
boundaries, it directs your vision to the areas you are interested in and excludes the rest.
Was there damage on the Spaulding Tract located west of Philomath?
Just scattered damage. The 40 acres that were set up as a demonstration area, that we thinned
in 1956, had scattered wind-throw in the stands, but not enough to change the stand compositions.
Was there damage on the Dunn Forest?
Yes. The map of wind-throw included the Dunn Forest.
You described to us how you and John Beuter took over the forest management and forest supervising
jobs in 1973. Would you go over that again?
When I took over as forest manager in July 1973, the Forest Management Team consisted of
myself and one forest technician. The Forest Management and Forest Engineering secretaries were to type letters for me, so I didn’t even have a secretary. To get my book work done, I
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came to work early and left late. During the work day, I laid out the harvest areas, supervised
the contractors, and supervised all the activities on the forest. Bill Davies used to write an
annual report consisting of one or two pages, and I helped him do that by keeping the harvest records. John and I came up with an annual report that covered all the forest-operation
activities, including the teaching and research uses. My first annual report was sixteen pages
long, and within four years it was over 100 pages long. This plus all the other activities began
to overwhelm me and I asked my part-time secretaries to do more and more. In 1976, John
Beuter was appointed head of the Forest Management Department. When he saw how much
work I was requiring from his secretary, he hired me a secretary of my own. My first secretary
was Nancy House. She was one of the best. She organized my files and made order where
order was needed. She handled everything without difficulty, but she only lasted six months.
Then there was Florence Johnson, and next Diane. Between the two of them, they worked
until 1980. Then we hired Ellen Hooven. She is a forestry graduate from the University of
Washington, and understood the job from the first day. She needed to learn a lot, because she
had been out of the job market while she raised a family. She learned and worked out in a
tremendous way. During this time, up to 1982, with a helper and a secretary we did a lot of the
forest work using student work crews and I supervised them, too. We had a full-time summer
maintenance crew who worked on road upkeep, regeneration surveys, and so forth. Then, during the winter months, we ran a tree-planting program with anywhere from 10 to 40 students.
When Jeff Garver was hired in 1981, he became my third full-time assistant. Then, with the
beginning of a forest inventory, we hired two more full-timers to set up the initial design and
control for the new forest inventory. That brings us up to the beginning of the forest inventory
and a major expansion of the forest operations.
What kind of problems did you have setting up this inventory system?
One of the main problems was the variation of magnetic attractions, so that using a magnetic
compass to run cruise lines was difficult. The readings could vary by as much as from five to
ten degrees. We solved this problem by running control lines with a transit control. The transit survey followed roads for the most part, and we found that the rock on the roads was full
of iron that caused the roads to influence the magnetic attraction. If the survey points stayed
on the same side of the road, the magnetic declination stayed nearly the same. But, if a survey
point fell on the opposite side of the road, there was a drastic change in the magnetic declination. This could be as much as five degrees off by just crossing the road. This, along with the
local variations there naturally, gave some real problems. For instance, the original survey in the
1850s identified as much as six degrees variation along the west line of Section 6, T11S, R5W
at the head of Soap Creek.
Tell us about your experiences of working with the students as part-time workers on the forest.
My first experience directing student work crews started about 1970. In 1969, we had removed wind-thrown trees from an east-sloping hill on the Dunn Forest and machine piled
and burned the slash. Student work crews planted the area the following winter. The survival
rate was only about 20 percent at the end of the first growing season, and Bill Davies said we
wouldn’t do any more jobs like that if we couldn’t get regeneration established. I went out to
the site and pulled dead seedlings, and found that 70 percent of the roots were “J” rooted. It
was bad planting that had caused the poor survival. The main reason for the bad planting was
students supervising students, and they didn’t feel they had the authority to correct the planters
when they made mistakes.
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The next year, in December 1969 and January 1970, we clearcut-harvested 30 acres of scattered
timber on the north side of Mitzy Point at the head of Oak Creek. Bill had me supervise the
student planting crew to ensure the area was planted properly. That was the first year a woman
applied for work on the planting crew, and Bill said no women were allowed on the crew. This
student made a beeline for Dean’s office, and Bill was informed that she would be on the crew.
She stuck it out through the planting, but there were times when she would have stayed home
if she hadn’t made such a big issue out of it. Anyway, we got about 85 percent survival on
that planting, and I supervised all the planting from them on. Since that year, we always had
women on the planting crew and even supervising the planting crew.
When I took over as research forest manager July 1, 1973, I had to rely on students to
accomplish most of the labor-intensive jobs like planting, roadside maintenance, herbicide
applications, fertilizing, inventories. The average number of students working part-time
was around 50 per year. Many of these students became like family to me as we trained and
worked. As the number of women enrolling in forestry increased, so did the number of women
increase on the work crews. Most of the students came to work inexperienced, so we were
always training them in safe operations and procedures. Some of them worked at one job for
a short period, and others worked for the full time they were students. Many of them became
permanent employees after they graduated, like Debbie Johnson, who is the inventory forester
on the present staff.
Susan Sahnow was another student who worked for me her full four years as a student on a
variety of jobs. She ran a farm-type tractor mowing road shoulders, planted trees, and worked
on the summer maintenance crew. She was raised on a farm near Forest Grove, so she had a
good background of work experience to build on. She tells people she learned more from me
working on the forest than she did in the classroom. Susan is working for the Oregon Fish
and Wildlife Commission, setting up and maintaining interpretive centers in northwestern
Oregon.
Of course, most of the students who worked on the forest were men, and many of them
worked for most of their time at OSU. They were the students who needed part-time work
to help pay the bills, and usually they were very good workers. One of the tree planters for a
couple of years was Ernie Richardson, a black from the streets of New York who came west to
play football and get a degree in forestry. He was about six-foot-six-inches tall and weighed
about 250 pounds. He was a great football player, but a poor student. He never learned how
to study, but he was a great tree-planter. When he swung his hoe-dad, it buried to the handle.
Then, a slight pull back opened a hole, and in went the tree. He could plant about twice as
many as the rest of the students on the crew. I followed him checking on his planting, because
I thought he couldn’t be doing a good job if he planted that fast. I never found a poorly
planted tree in his row. After many ups and downs, Ernie finally graduated with a degree in
Forest Management. He worked for Crown Zellerbach for a few years. The last I heard from
him, he was selling cars in Gresham, Oregon.
We used to have a student get-together at New Year’s, when the tree-planters had about run
out of energy. We made a stew in a five-gallon kettle—we called it “tree planters stew,” and
had homemade bread and apple cobbler. The students came to our house with their wives, kids,
and friends to share the evening. The year Ernie planted, we had planned on 35 and only 20
showed up. I thought my wife and I would be eating leftover stew until February, but Ernie
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came to our rescue. When he was on his fourth bowl of stew, Marion [Rowley] asked him if
he was going to have some dessert. He said, “Yes, I’ll have dessert, and then I’ll have another
bowl of stew.” And he did. When he finished, the kettle was empty.
How many black people worked on the forest that you can think of?
Not many. Ernie is the one that stands out. I don’t remember others. I had two blacks working
for me when I was logging, before I became forest manager. They were Walt Watson and Jim
Pearce. Walt ran tractor and a variety of other jobs as the need arose, and so did Jim. One day
Bill Davies was out going over our logging west of Cronemiller Lake when Jim was running
a skidder picking up scattered wind-fall trees. He had picked up a turn of logs and was dragging them down a dirt road just as Bill and I sat down on the upper side of the road to eat our
lunch. Jim was looking back at the logs to make sure they would miss a small seedling on the
lower side of the road. The front wheel of the skidder climbed the bank a little. When the logs
cleared the seedling, he turned to the right, and, with that one wheel on the bank, it caused the
skidder to overturn no more than ten feet from where we were sitting. All we could see was
the bottom of the skidder and the wheels. Jim came crawling out of the cab, unhurt but somewhat shaken. I said to him, “Jim, you almost turned white.” We all had a good laugh about
that, and in about an hour we had the skidder back on its wheels, checked over, and ready to
work. Jim lives in Brownsville now, and we still visit occasionally.
There is one thing you mentioned to me—about how people were assuming some trees were shaped like
a rocking-chair rocker because of soil movement. And you pointed out that the trees were misshapen
due to a thick stand of young trees being pushed over by a heavy snow in 1936. Then you mentioned a
couple of other weather incidents—an ice storm in January 1940 and the flood of 1964. I wonder if you
can tell us what kinds of permanent effects, or even short-term effects, those events must have had on
the forest?
Well, the snow of ‘36 caused a lot of snow-break, and flattened some stands that were too
thickly spaced. Some of these trees lived, and turned the tip leader to vertical—leaving the
butt of the tree misfigured for the life of that tree and causing the tree to lose the value of the
first 16 feet at least. That storm and the ice storm of 1940 broke over 70 percent of the tops in
some young 30–50-year-old stands. If this didn’t involve the whole green crown, the tree put
out a new leader. In some stands, researchers found that top rot got into the stem at this break,
and the trees lost one foot of the stem to the rot for each year. Twenty years after the break, the
rot could be down from the break 20 feet. This happens in stands with low vigor, and the larger
the diameter of the stem at the break, the more likely the rot. But, in stands with a high vigor,
there is very little loss from rot. This shows up on the Blodgett Tract in Columbia County.
That site is a high “two” or low “one.” Even though there are more ice storms in that area, the
rot incidence is less than in McDonald-Dunn Forest.
Do you think there was a genetic adaptation up there?
No. I think the vigor of the stand controls the outcome of the damage. It’s the soil and climate, and maybe the amount of rain when rot spores form that keep it washed off of the fresh
breaks.
How about 1964 flooding?
It was a 100-year event and probably a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. It had minor influence
on the overall forest. There were many headwall failures near the top of the ridges, some creek
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beds were washed clean, and a few culverts lost, but the storm didn’t cause major changes
to even one percent of the stands. Most of them are part of the natural process in a young
mountain range like our Coast Range, that has been an uplifting type of process. The headwall
failures are unstable areas that are the reverse of the uplifting. I was in Peru in 1979, and flew
in a light airplane over a branch of the Andes that was about 9,000 feet high. All along the top
of this sharp mountain ridge, there were a series of headwall failures—even though the area
was uninhabited for over 50 miles.
How about Oak Creek and Soap Creek. Did flood water back up anywhere near the research forests or
on the Soap Creek ag land?
The flood washed out a few culverts. One large culvert on the county road just east of Sulphur Springs [Sulphur Springs Road] was washed out, and many of the headwall failures sent
surges of water down the creeks that flooded areas for short periods.
It sounds like, from what you are describing, that, in the last 150 to 200 years, the principal shapers of
the forests have been wind storms and people using fire and logging?
Yes, I think that is true.
We haven’t talked about any fires in this area. What has your experience been with fire?
There haven’t been any major lightning fires on the forest during the years I have been here.
One fire covered less than a quarter of an acre. There have been man-caused fires, with most
of them being slash fires set to remove the logging slash to reduce the fire hazard and clear the
ground for planting. One of these slash fires, in October 1949, burned into green timber in
several areas on the head of Oak Creek. These areas were salvaged about ten years later.
You are using fire and logging to maintain a productive forest, but it seems as if we are talking about
timber production, and not the other component—such as recreation and wildlife. What about them?
I don’t think we have to differentiate between timber productivity and recreation and wildlife.
I think they all work together. I believe we can modify our forest to keep it healthy, and the
wildlife will be there and not suffer because of our management. If we let the forest deteriorate,
the amount of wildlife will vary. But, if we keep a variety of age classes, we will have that habitat needed by a wider variety of wildlife. Some of them use grassy or brush openings, and some
of them use dense stands. And I know that recreational opportunities are there in the managed
forest, probably in more abundance than in a wilderness.
So, is a productive forest one that produces values that the people want?
I believe a productive forest is one that produces income and values for the owner within the
laws of the land, and I believe, when the laws of the land become so restrictive that they take
away the ability to use property for income and personal values, they need to be changed.
Would you call that an unproductive forest?
Yes. If a law restricts a landowner from harvesting and making an income to pay his
expenses, then the law has taken the property. This discussion gets us away from managing
a public forest and into private forest management, but it is the most important issue
facing landowners and foresters today. It has to do with the Endangered Species Act
[ESA] and how it is enforced. The ESA calls for species to be protected when they have
been scientifically proven to be endangered, and that is one of the main problems. Much
of the work done to prove endangerment is not scientific, but hypothetical in nature. A
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few observations are made and a judgment made, without fully proving if the condition of
“endangered” is really there.
I want to ask you a few more questions about the Arboretum, but on the soil issue. There is a soil survey
that was done about the same time as the timber inventory. Is that all tied into the forest inventory you
and John Beuter started?
We did the soil survey before the timber inventory was started. We hired a former student,
Susan Jorgenson, with a minor in Forest Soils to do the inventory. She ran grid lines over the
whole forest, dug soil pits to get a good soil profile, and put all the soil types on our main forest
map. I checked over her work as it progressed, and made suggestions as needed. There were
very few disagreements as this work progressed. Because of my extensive experience of working on the forest for over 25 years, I was able to point out problems. Once Susan had typed a
soil north of Calloway Creek as a well-drained soil type, and I asked her to go back and check
it because, when I built a road through the site in 1961, I had found it to be very poor-drained
soil. Susan’s resurvey of the site proved me to be correct.
You talked about a soil problem on Berry Creek that we didn’t get recorded. What was that about?
This was about the Fish and Wildlife Department developing a research site on the South
Fork of Berry Creek. They built a dam in the creek with a weir to control the flow of water on
a quarter-mile section of the creek. All the excess water was diverted around the area in a canal
dug in a level field on the south side of the study area. The canal returned the water to the
main channel just east of the 100 Road. When the creek flooded in the winter, the canal that
started out as an eight-foot wide by four-foot deep ditch eroded down through the soil until it
had eroded a ditch 20 to 30 feet wide and 10 to 12 feet deep. All this material washed down to
the main channel, and filled it in until there wasn’t room for the water to go under the bridge
on the road. After fighting the situation for a number of years, I installed a concrete dip with
a 24-inch culvert under it. During low water, all the flow went through the culvert; during
high water, most of the water flowed over the concrete. The next big rain storm after installation of this low-water crossing resulted in the water spilling over the concrete slab and cutting
through the silt and rock deposited from the bypass ditch. It cut down to the original creek
bed, about eight feet lower, and revealed a square timber sticking out of the bank that must
have come from the sawmill that operated upstream from the study area. During the 1960s,
I found the remains of this mill and several shacks that had been used to house the mill crew.
There were young trees growing up through them, and the roofs had mostly caved in, making
a home for wood rats. Since that time, all the evidence of buildings has rotted into the ground,
and all that is left is the young trees. It is amazing how fast the works of man can be obliterated by nature.
It reminds me of a time during World War II when I was a soldier in the 41st Infantry in the
southern Philippines. We were on a two-day combat patrol along the shore of a large island.
About the middle of the second day, our Filipino guide, Manuel, stopped us in a young stand
of trees and brush. He began looking all around and I asked him what the problem was. He
said, “If I can find the house, I can get a bearing on where the trail goes into the forest.” We
found the remains to a house with trees up to six inches in diameter and 30-feet tall growing
where the house had stood. Manuel said, “This was a field last time I was here four years ago.”
Manuel had a wife and two children, and when we finished the patrol he asked me if I could
get him some canned milk. I said I didn’t know of any, and he told me his baby was dying be107
cause his wife couldn’t nurse it and they were keeping it alive with sugar water. I went into the
kitchen area and found two cans of milk and give them to Manuel. We left the area a couple
of days later and returned three months later. The baby had died. When I left the Philippines, I
lost contact with Manuel.
You mentioned Deep Creek as a tributary to Oak Creek. Could you show me on the map where it is so
we can mark it?
Yes. The reason we named it Deep Creek was because it was eroded down about eight feet
below the surrounding surfaces, with almost vertical banks. There had been a headwall failure
upstream, and I think the surge of water resulting from that mass failure did the eroding to cut
it so deep. In that general area, there were other mass failures over the past 20 or 30 years. Just
north of this area, in Section 18, T11S, R5W, I found a crack running along the contour of the
land that was from 6 to 12 inches wide and 300 feet long. The ground on the downhill side
of the crack had slumped about a foot, but didn’t move any farther. This crack was visible for
several years, but eventually filled with soil and duff. I found several areas on the forest where
this same thing occurred. I call them “near mass failures.”
Do you think they will fail next time?
We never know. Some of these were located away from any of man’s influences. Others may
have been because of the water table being influenced by roads. They are something we need to
be aware of when we enter these areas.
Would they have anything to do with road building, or are they just a part of the nature of the terrain?
Probably both. There was no human activity near the failures in Section 18, but one in Section 16, with a culvert above it, could have been caused by the water out-flowing the culvert.
There was a mass failure on the West Fork of Oak Creek that was caused by four-wheel-drive
vehicles using a skid road and destroying the water bars before the 1964 flood. The waters ran
down the skid road for about 1,500 feet to a waterbar cut into a rock-surfaced road that routed
all that flow onto a steep slope. This slope overloaded and failed. It flowed into a steep ravine,
and ran about a half mile to the West Fork of Oak Creek Road. The road stopped the slide. At
that point it was a mixture of mud and rotten logs 10 to 20 feet deep and up to 50 feet wide.
I want to ask you about Colverson’s Peavy Arboretum plan from February 1982. Did it have something to do with the soil survey?
No, it was not connected to the soil survey. Peter Colverson worked on this plan as part of his
major study as a student, and then worked part-time for me on Arboretum maintenance and
planning. There was a list of plants in the Arboretum that was very outdated. Trees and shrubs
had been planted and listed over the years, but no one followed up on planting to make sure
they lived. As a result, many of the listings did not exist. Under Peter’s plan, we developed a
grid system with a base much like the one used in the Hoyt Arboretum in Portland. When the
grid was in place, we inventoried all the plants and located them on the map by grid numbers.
For the first time, we had a complete list of plants and their locations in the Arboretum. One
of the things this plan did was establish an order for future plantings. Over the years, species
were planted with no guidelines as to where they were planted or what they were. We determined to group plantings and stay with western United State species as much as possible.
On top of the mountain near the Powder House Saddle on the section line between Section 35 and Section 36, there is evidence that there was a lookout tower there. Do you know anything about it?
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Yes. It wasn’t a lookout tower. It was a radio repeater station. The State Forestry Department
built a small building for the radio equipment, and climbed a large tree and rigged an antenna
in it. They had a telephone wire running down the ridge to the Arboretum. They used to communicate to the radio, and broadcast and receive messages from vehicles as needed. The concrete
blocks and boards you found are what is left of the building that housed the radio. They had a
jeep road from the main road that they used to haul batteries to the radio as needed. This was in
use until the State Forestry Department moved from Peavy Arboretum to Philomath in 1964.
When the State Forestry Department Office moved from Peavy Arboretum to Philomath
in 1964, they moved the building they used as an office with them to Philomath. There were
several other buildings in the Arboretum that were sold, and were to be removed from the site.
I believe Georgia-Pacific purchased the buildings. The old kitchen, dining room building, from
the CCC days was remodeled and given to the OSU Foundation. The remodeled building is
Peavy Lodge. The other buildings were remodeled or removed, and a new residence was built
in their place. These buildings are the others on the east side of the creek in the Arboretum,
and were given to the College of Forestry.
We were talking about the various buildings in the Arboretum area. Would you tell us about the
Forestry Club Cabin?
Soon after the College began acquiring land for a university forest, the students and faculty
built a log cabin on the site of the present cabin. It was about 40 by 60 feet, with one door
in the middle of the south side and a huge brick fireplace at each end of the building. It had
a shake roof, and in the beginning it had a dirt floor. Sometime before 1949 a concrete floor
was added. This building was used by faculty and students as a meeting place and party room.
In February 1949, it burned to the ground after a fraternity had used it for a party. It was
determined that the logs had developed rot near the fireplace, and a hot fire had caused this to
Marvin receiving award.
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catch fire and smolder until it opened to a draft of air and ignited the whole structure. Within
days, the Forestry Club had investigated the possibility of reconstructing. There was $6,000
available from the state insurance fund, and it was determined that would be enough to get
the basic structure built if we used mostly donated labor. I was a junior student in Logging
Engineering at the time and was taking, as electives, all the Architecture courses Oregon
State University had to offer. I was drafted by the Forestry Club to design a new cabin. I came
up with three plans and, after the club reviewed the plans and the campus administration
reviewed them, we settled on the plan you see now.
By September 1949, we began building. The Logging Engineering students, using a D7 Army
surplus tractor, logged trees from a stand near the Oak Creek Saddle, and hauled them to the
war-surplus sawmill on Lower Oak Creek. Forest Products students did the milling, squaring
the logs on three sides, and they were hauled to the cabin site in war-surplus trucks that were
used as student transportation during the week. We constructed a preservative-soaking tank
at the cabin site, and began a cold-soaking treatment of the logs. The foundation was poured
in October and the walls were started soon after. We set the roof trusses in place over Easter
vacation and installed the decking. By having some professors bring their field labs to the
site to install the cedar shakes, we were ready for the first use of the building in May 1950. I
was also the construction foreman for the job, and took part in every phase of the work right
down to helping finish the concrete floor just days before the first use. Mel Lieurance, a Forest
Management student from Kansas, whose father was masonry contractor, had the know-how
to direct that part of the work.
The shell was completed, but there was a lot of finish work left to do on the inside. Students of
the class of 1951 and ‘52 completed the work. The fireplace was contracted out to Robert Wilson,
a major contractor from Corvallis, who was also a student across campus and just getting started
in the contracting business. Over the years, a heat system was added and then improved, shutters
were added to reduce window breaking by vandals, an outdoor balcony was removed for the same
reason and the most recent addition has been the indoor restrooms replacing the outhouses.
Where were the restrooms located?
They were west of the cabin, up on the hillside in that stand of Douglas-fir. That whole hillside was clearcut to supply the logs for the first cabin built in 1925. I think this stand is a
natural stand, although they started the forest nursery about the same time as the cabin was
built. These trees seem to be too natural—there aren’t any rows that stand out like in a planted
stand. To the north of this stand, there is a grove of black locust that was planted about that
same date. Many of them were blown over by the October 12, 1962, wind storm. A few years
ago, I had a student work crew cut the wind-throw into rails for the rail fence south of the
cabin. That was another project aimed at reducing damage to the cabin site. People were riding horses all over the lawn when the ground was wet. The rail fence ended that problem. The
black locust rails were still solid 12 years after they fell, and are just as solid today.
They used to cook “Bean Hole Beans” here. Where did they do that?
Yes. Professor Harry Patterson would. Had a trench dug about 18 inches deep and 24 inches
wide, and long enough to handle about a dozen one-gallon cans. They would build a fire in
this trench and fire it until they had a good bed of coals. Then they threw a little dirt in on the
coals. Then the sealed cans filled with beans were placed in the trench. Then the dirt was filled
back into the trench covering the cans. This was done the day before they were going to be
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eaten. When the crew was ready to eat at noon the next day, the cans were uncovered steaming
hot and ready to eat. The trench was just to the west of the porch, and ran south about 15 feet.
Was the maple tree here then?
Yes. It seems like it has been there ever since the first cabin was built.
The Forestry Club Cabin is 45 years old now. Do you think you will be around for its 50th anniversary?
Yes, if I keep my cholesterol controlled.
There is a pond in the Arboretum. How was that constructed?
Sometime in the early 1960s, the College of Forestry had a grant of money given to improve
the Arboretum. They hired two students to work the whole summer, putting in water lines and
building walkways and trails. They routed the creek to its present location and the pond was
constructed. They used dynamite to shoot a ditch to reroute the creek, and I built the pond
using a TD-9 International tractor. That was while I was a contract logger working on the
forest. I uncovered a cast-iron griddle while building the pond. It had evidently been buried
back during the CCC days. I had run over it with the tractor and broke a corner off. I took it
to out shop and welded it together, and used it on campouts for years. I lost it some time in the
1970s. I think my son used it and never returned it.
Another interesting event from that summer was the dynamiting of the ditch. This was accomplished using ditching-grade dynamite. A steel bar was driven into the mud about two
feet and one stick of this 80-percent ditching powder was inserted into the hole. There was one
hole per foot for the whole ditch, and the whole thing was exploded using one dynamite cap
in the last stick placed. The students asked me if they should remove the windows from the old
CCC building, and I advised them not to bother because the dirt would not throw that far. I
didn’t go into the building to check them, and that was a fatal error on my part. The windows
were sitting on the sills without anything holding them in place but gravity. The shock wave
from the explosive blew them all in onto the floor, resulting in a lot of broken glass and one
red face. I was right on one thing—the dirt didn’t even hit the building.
Did you uncover anything else?
About the same time we were logging to the west of the Arboretum, I found the remains of an
outdoor latrine about 60 or 70 feet south of the gate on the road to the Forestry Cabin. It was
about 10 by 20 feet in size, and was about a 12- or 16-holer. When I found it, the walls were
still standing but the roof had caved in. The pack rats had used it for years. They say these are
good sites to dig up artifacts in.
Wow. That’s the biggest latrine I’ve ever heard of. Did they have any kind of privacy?
You obviously were not in the service. There is no privacy in the restrooms or showers, no
screens or dividers of any kind. You are just like goldfish in a bowl. You learn to live that way.
Like overseas in combat as an example. We had been on the front line living in trenches for
three weeks. When we came down off the mountain, we came to a creek about the size of
Oak Creek and they allowed us to clean up. A platoon of men spread out along the bank, and
stripped off and waded in for a bath. Then, when that campaign ended, they mounted a wing
tank from an airplane on a platform along side of this creek, and filled it full of water and
mounted a shower head on it. That was our shower. It was about 50 feet from the road that
the whole area used. If you took a shower, there were no screens. You stood out for everyone to
look at. You lose your modesty fast, or you go dirty.
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Near this same gate, there was an irrigation ditch that ran from the creek on the south edge of
the nursery southeast to the neighboring ranch. This ranch had water rights from the pioneer
days, and used the ditch until they installed pipeline from above the Forestry Club Cabin to
their ranch—sometime in the 1950s when Harry Nettleton was forest manager.
What is the biggest change you had noticed in your whole time at the OSU Research Forest?
The biggest change was going from an unmanaged forest to a managed forest. Before 1956,
there was very little done with the timber stands. The logged-over areas had been planted, but
the older stands, from 40 years on up, were filled with wind-throw, insect-killed trees, various rots, and deformed trees caused by snow and ice storms. Ninety percent of the forest was
thinned or salvaged in the first 12 years of management, resulting in a dramatic change in the
looks of the stands. Before the rehabilitation work was done, the College of Forestry personnel
were somewhat apologetic about the forest. Afterwards, they began to brag about it. Because
we removed the small trees from the stand, it actually looked like there was more volume than
before the operation took place.
Do you think the appearance of the forest is an important consideration?
Yes. When I managed the forest, I always tried to imagine what it was going to look like to the
people who used it for recreation and how it looked from the valley below. I made a series of
clearcuts along the east side of the 500 Road that always had tall trees blocking the view from
the valley below. I figured, by the time I cut the trees that blocked the view, the first cutting
area would be green, 15- to 20-year-old reproduction and be pleasing the eyes of the neighbors. In the early 1960s, we had a tour of Forest Service personnel visiting our thinning operation. One area we had thinned four or five years previous to the visit looked as if it had never
been entered. They questioned my information until I showed them the stumps and the skid
trails. They were difficult to see, because the needle drop and forbs’ growth had covered them.
Another big change has been the development of a network of good all-weather roads to give
access to almost all of the forest. The miles of all-weather roads increased from about 50 miles
to a total of over 110 miles from 1956 to 1996. This gave us year-around access to most of the
forest, making it available to researchers and forestry classes.
A third change has been the use of the forest for research. Before 1973, there was no control
of research projects that registered location and type of research. Research had been located on
the forest in a haphazard manner. As a result, much of the work was lost as soon as the researcher finished the project. John Beuter and I began registering the research projects in 1973,
and requiring the researchers to furnish data as to what they were studying. Then we approved
and assigned an area where it was located, and required a report on the results of the research.
What is your proudest accomplishment during your time on the forest?
I think it is the demonstration of carrying on an active harvesting operation on a forest adjacent to a rather large metropolitan area for over 30 years without upsetting most of them. In
fact, as the operation developed, the recreational use of the forest increased dramatically, and
part of that was due to our operation. More areas were accessible, and they looked more pleasing to the eye than the unmanaged forest.
Did you operate on all the forest?
No, there are a few areas we reserved from harvesting because of unique characteristics—such
112
as Calloway Creek from Cronemiller Lake west to the Powder House Saddle and north of
the 500 Road. Also, the area southeast of the switchback on the 600 Road. These areas contain
remnants of old-growth stands that are important as examples and study areas for researchers
and forestry classes.
This brings us to the conclusion of this interview. Do you think an oral history of this nature is worthwhile to capture facts and information?
Yes. The early foresters in Germany developed their management plans by looking back ten
years to see what actions were taken, how well they followed the management plan, and then
developed a plan for the next decade based some on how well they followed the previous
plan. They had records going back 300 and 400 years to relate to—also maybe carrying them
through three or four rotations. Without this looking back, we can be making the same mistakes over and over again.
In looking at the confusion in the forest administration and management we are going
through in our nation and in the world today, I think it is important to develop some good
sound rules to guide us in the management and use of our natural resources. On the political
front, we need sound laws to direct our management policies. These laws should be general.
They should be based on facts as they are, and not on untruths or emotions. They should let the
foresters in the field design the actual management plans and carry them out. The field plans
should be developed by experienced personnel on the actual area, and not in some distant office. The most important tool we have to manage our forests with is our feet. We have to walk
the area to discover the needs first-hand, using all the information available to us. If we follow
a plan based along this line, the ecosystem will be in good shape.
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Appendices
Appendix A.
Marv’s Songs
by Marvin L. Rowley, Class of 1950
The Fernhopper Legend
Out west in Oregon, near the Pacific sands,
Among the hills, where the Douglas-fir stands,
And Wapito wander in ghostly bands,
Bracken fern grows rank and tall.
The man who dares trespass this tangled forest,
Finds the going tough as he nears the crest.
If he makes it through, he’ll need a rest.
Bracken fern standing like a wall.
A crew of boys from OAC climbed a brackened hill,
A tangled bracken fence resisting with an iron will,
And if nature hadn’t helped they would be there still,
In bracken fern, rank and tall.
In that mass of bracken hung a paper packet,
Home of a denizen of the forest, queen yellow jacket,
And all her clan making quite a racket,
And bracken fern hid them all.
Those poor lads bayed like a trailing hound,
When they pushed that packet to the ground,
And the yellow jacket clan began to bound.
Bracken fern jumping, what a ball.
That hapless crew hopped over fern and dale.
They hopped over trees and they beat a trail,
Back to Corvallis with a groan and a wail,
Bracken fern hoppers back in Peavy’s Hall.
Their names are lost, but the facts are best,
And all future foresters must endure unrest,
With the title of FERNHOPPER, forester of the West,
Where bracken fern grows thick and tall.
115
I Fell a Tree
Wake up in the morning
at the crack of day,
Eat a hearty breakfast
and I’m on my way,
Winding up the mountain
feeling light and free,
Crank up my trusty chainsaw
and I fall a tree.
This will make a two-by-four,
or pulp for paper bag.
Need to thin them now
so the growth doesn’t drag.
Move around the hillside
to an older stand.
Need to do some cleanup
for the betterment of the land.
This beetle-infested tree
had better go to town.
The other trees will be safe
when it is not around.
Work on through the day,
gas up my saw and mow,
I cut out all the sick trees,
leave room for healthy ones to grow.
Late in the afternoon,
I find one straight and tall.
Use all the skill of years
to figure out the fall.
Drop it on the hillside,
it hits it with a thud.
A giant on the ground,
saved right to the bud.
A tree that’s full of service
and ready to be used,
for shelter, bridge, or container,
as the needs of man are proved.
I work on to the evening,
following my Creator’s rules,
Until He calls me home,
and I lay down all my tools.
Then as I stand before my Master
and He asks, “What have you done for Me?”
I’ll stand up among the saints,
and say, “I fell a tree.”
116
The Song of the Trees
I move to the music of the forest and the trees.
It calls and it beckons with its melodies,
Through all of my senses and into my being,
A rhythm advances, my symphony sings.
The colors are melodies that capture my eye.
They hold them and draw them away from the sky.
The green, the red, the yellow, the brown, and the blue,
All add to the melody with their varying hues.
And, oh, how the odors add to the song.
Like the music of flutes, they move me along.
The smell of the rain filtering to the ground,
Of fungi and flowers and shrubs all around.
The sounds in my ears, they soar and they wane,
Keeping time with my pace as I walk in the rain.
The wind like a fiddle, now low and then high,
With a background of bird calls from the sky.
The wind on my cheeks, the rain in my hair,
The caress of the leaves, as I travel to my lair.
Through all of my Journey and into my being,
God’s creation in harmony, my symphony sings.
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The Saga of Mount Saint Helens,
or What Really Happened May 18
You had better get set and hold on to your chair,
Cause I’ve got a story that will curl your hair.
It starts with those Arabs who own all the oil,
The cost of which has added a lot to our toil.
The old steel tower I’ve had working on the hill
Don’t run very good on the produce from a still.
So me and the crew were brainstorming for a clue
And pondering on what was the best thing to do.
When one of the boys said, “Hey, I just now remember
A great little find I made while hunting last December.
Way up a canyon over toward Spirit Lake,
I found an old Steam Pot that’s free for the take.
If we could get that old machine on a new wooden sled,
Fix up the broiler and whistle, we could wake up the dead.”
Well, that sounded interesting so we went out to look,
And our heads started spinning, one look’s all it took.
We went out on weekends with fish pole, so no one would know,
And started to work on her to make the old gal go.
We hammered and welded and plugged and we drilled,
Until one spring morning she stood there all frilled.
All we needed was wire to wrap on her spools,
And bull block and guy lines and all them tools.
We managed to scrounge them from the rest of the outfit,
And soon we was ready to make our big hit.
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The crew all decided publicity wouldn’t do,
So we looked for a remote area to see how she’d blow.
We moved that old yarder into her dock,
Tied her down good to a good-sized rock.
We cut a stack of wood all full of pitch,
This kind of fuel won’t make Mr. Arab rich.
We snuck out there one Sunday, the 18th of May,
We fired the old boiler and it look’d like we were on our way.
That old broiler a’belching black smoke fit to kill,
And the old steam whistle echoing over the hill.
We looked for something to hook onto to see how it would pull,
And found a big wind-fall down in a hole.
The steam gauge was a’climbing up into the red,
When we give her a charge to raise the log out of bed.
There was a groan that shook the whole mountain side,
The engine struggled into life and opened up wide.
Here come that wind-fall til it hung on a stump,
That main line came tight, then let go with a thump.
Things kinda got mixed up and the boiler blew,
It scattered debris and also the crew.
It blew a big hole in the mountain and ruined Spirit Lake,
Knocked down a bunch of timber, which was sure hard to take.
Now that old machine lies up there on the slope,
And that big load of pitch still gives a puff and a whoop,
And ashes come down all over the West,
Just because a good crew tried to get ahead of the rest!
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Appendix B.
Seventy-five years with the Oregon State University
School of Forestry’s Forestry Clubs
by Marvin L. Rowley
In the beginning, when a forestry curriculum was developing at Oregon Agricultural College
under the tutelage of Professor Edward Lake, he and five students met on November 16, 1906,
and officially formed the Forestry Club. The object of the Club was stated as: “Promoting forestry
interests in the state.” Meetings were held twice monthly, with the main topics of discussion items
such as current forestry literature and general progress in forestry. Also, a common topic was the
latest legislative effects on the forest industry. Noted in the minutes of a 1907 meeting is an item
that “girls” not be allowed in the club.
In 1908, there were five freshmen and five sophomore members, one of whom was T. J. Starker,
freshly arrived from the big city of Portland. He made a motion to select an official club pin to
be worn. The motion was passed. I don’t know just what this pin looked like, or if the motion was
acted upon, but during the Peavy years a decoration that did take hold for more than 60 years was
the wearing of a red tie on Wednesday. This custom was special on Fernhoppers’ Day. In 1910, 22
students registered in forestry and the future Dean Peavy arrived on the scene.
From the beginning, the Forestry Club provided a social and professional affiliation when the
forestry profession was just spreading its wings and learning to fly. It provided a forum for
expressing new ideas and arguing them out before they became public. Its membership was
essentially the total student body and faculty, and this esprit de corps stayed with the Forestry
School for over 40 years.
The close-knit group that developed challenged other campus groups over the years. There was an
annual football game, started back there in antiquity, between the Foresters and the Miners, who
fought it out on the gridiron in the days when a football field could pass as a corn field if you didn’t
look too close. On down the years, there were other rivalries, such as a tug-of-war between the
football team and the foresters, with the foresters winning more often than not. It wasn’t all blood
and gore though, as an annual Foresters’ Ball was begun back in the ‘twenties, first known as the
Peavy Hop and performed on the first floor of the then-new forestry building. At some later date,
this event was moved to the Memorial Union Ballroom, and was one of the main social events
of the year on campus—with some kind of cooperation between the foresters and the girls from
Home Economics being a part of the gala affair. This event came to an end in 1954, when a dance
was held at the Forestry Club Cabin in November. This fall dance gradually took on an all-day
flavor of contest and party, and is now known as the Fall Frost.
Socially speaking, the forestry student and Club member was often the head of a family and a few
years older than his rivals across campus. This was especially true after World War II, when the
returning veterans brought their brides to Corvallis in record numbers. The 1948 Annual Cruise
had pictures of 38 “second-growth foresters,” a part of the post-war baby boom.
Back there somewhere in the early years, singing was also a major part of any Forestry Club
meeting, with a piano player and a song leader appointed, and the old ballads of yesterday rang out.
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“Alouette” is one that survived many decades, with song leader George Schroeder as a student and
later a faculty member leading the crew. Other songs were “Down under the Hill,” “In the Land of
the Lassen,” “The Little Brown Jug,” and many others. It was custom to open the meeting with a
few songs, just to get everyone loosened up.
Early-day field trips were a part of the forestry students’ life, with some of them being many days
long and requiring the roughing it in the out-of-doors in the days before many of our modern conveniences. It was during these times, the fraternal group probably performed at their best with various practical jokers putting rocks in packs, various items in bunks and beds, and generally helping
their fellow students develop a caution not readily attainable in the classroom. When forest properties became a part of the facilities, first the Spaulding Tract on the eastern slopes of Marys Peak,
then Peavy Arboretum and McDonald Forest, these areas became the target of trips and improvement projects by the Club. Tree plantings, trail construction, and other down-to-earth jobs were a
part of every forester’s life, and the Club pitched in to help develop the fledgling properties.
In 1925, the major project was the construction of a Forestry Club Cabin in Peavy Arboretum,
just west of a knoll covered with young Douglas-fir trees. The project was carried out by 135
students and faculty under the direction of a student named Kelly B. McQuire. The cabin was
constructed of hand-peeled Douglas-fir logs about 17 inches maximum diameter, 15 inches
minimum diameter, and top diameter not less than 10 inches. There was not a stick of sawn
material in the building. It was nine logs high to the eaves, and about 44 feet long and 26 feet
wide. Kelly B. McQuire stated, “It was completed and stands on ‘our Arboretum’ as a monument
to all who had a part in the making.” There was a large brick-and-stone fireplace at one end,
with a second one added at the other end at a later date. Other improvements were electricity
and a woodshed. Constant maintenance kept the cabin weather-proof and usable. This cabin
served as a focal point of Club activities in the Arboretum area for 23 years. Then a fire burned
it to the ground on February 13, 1949. The smoke was still drifting up and the ashes still warm
when the Forestry Club went into action, cleaned up the mess, and planned a new cabin. Where
123 men labored 23 years before, 200-plus students and faculty labored anew. They designed, cut
and hammered into existence, and dedicated a new, larger structure. The dedication plaques still
hang on the walls of the cabin, signed by the Club officers and crew, and dedicating the building
to the furtherance of forestry in the same spirit as the original cabin was dedicated. In 1980, the
Forestry Club Cabin is still the focal point of Club activities at Peavy Arboretum. It has been
maintained by students and the maintenance crew from the Forest Research Laboratory, with a
few new improvements each year.
Back at the time of acquiring Peavy Arboretum, a special day was instigated by the Club—Arboretum Day. It was a work-and-play day and holds many a fond memory for those old times of the ‘20s
and ‘30s. Crews were picked and jobs assigned ahead of the day. Jobs performed were varied, but
had one thing in common—they were all hard, physical work, such as a common timber beast could
carry out without much brain power. There were trail construction and maintenance and building
repairs. Poison-oak grubbing was always assigned to anyone who proved they were immune to the
pest, and this is where I got my own first experience on Arboretum Day.
At noon, the crews came trailing in from the scattered points of labor, ready for the main meal of
the school year. It rivaled the old Fourth-of-July picnics and Thanksgiving feasts. It was then that
Harry Patterson’s Bean Hole Beans were dug out of the trench where they had been simmering
since the day before, and were dished out to the hungry crews—along with major portions of salad,
bread, and black coffee from the large pots boiling over the fire.
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After this meal was concluded, the officers and faculty presented awards and prizes to the outstanding members of the Club, honoring them for the extracurricular efforts of the year just past. These
presentations lasted long enough for the food to settle, and then it was off to the contests. The students reverted back to the days when a timber beast was king because he was best with spurs and ax,
or could make an old misery whip sing through the Douglas-fir. Or they proved they could walk on
water after Cronemiller Lake became available in 1937 and log-burling was added to the sports.
After the games, the crew drifted off toward town or sat around swapping lies and dreading going
back to the classroom for another couple of weeks of classes. Sometime in the late 1950s, the need
for the work crews changed with the arrival of a full-time logging contractor and a steady road and
forest maintenance program, and the spring day of Arboretum Day changed to the Spring Thaw.
The coming of Spring Thaw ended such traditions as work parties, Bean Hole Beans, and presenting awards, and signaled the advent of a new look of skirts and feminine foresters competing at the
games, followed by a dance in the cabin at the end of the day.
About 1929, the forestry curriculum on the major campuses of the West had developed in a number
of states, and clubs were formed paralleling the development at Oregon Agricultural College. Along
with this development came a desire to share with other schools through field trips, social events,
and contests. This led to the forming of a loosely knit group called the Association of Western Forestry Clubs. This group sponsored a yearly get-together of representatives of the various clubs, with
the host school being rotated among the member clubs. The host school was responsible for providing regionally unique tours, intercollege logging sports competition, and communication in the
form of an accumulation of articles from member clubs and information about the conclave details
as they developed.
This seventy-fifth year marks the return of the Association of Western Forestry Clubs conclave to
the Oregon State University campus, and it is planned to be a major event in the celebration of this
milestone year. The dates of this year’s conclave are April 21 through April 25, 1981.
Another tradition established back in 1930 by the Forestry Club and the alumni of the Forestry
School is the Fernhopper Banquet. This event usually takes place in February each year, and has been
the tie between the new and the old. It has been and is the place where the man on the job meets the
recruit who is looking for his place in the profession. This event has been planned mainly by the Forestry Club in earlier years. As the Forestry Alumni Association gained members, a sharing of some
of the planning has taken place, but mostly in an advisory capacity on the part of the Association.
The word “fernhopper” has been used to describe the forestry student at Oregon State University
from way back at the beginning, and, whether it came from a School of Mines student trying to be
derogatory or from a forestry student bragging about his ability to traverse the slope in giant steps,
the term stuck and is still used. We fernhoppers are rightly proud of the dubious title.
The Fernhopper Banquet was born to fill a need brought on in the Great Depression, when many
were unemployed and earning of a few bucks for next year’s stake was the main reason summer was
invented and inserted into the forestry curriculum. This banquet gave the student a chance to meet
prospective employers and make a pitch for a place on the payroll next June. Also, the employers,
as loyal Fernhoppers, were more than anxious to find a man or two who could carry a tail block to
yonder stump or take on a timber-cruising job that was taxing the regular crew. Fire-fighters were
needed, and lookouts, and an assortment of crew men whose jobs ended about the time of the fall
rains. These same needs exist today, and the 1981 Fernhoppers’ Banquet will see a few students
breathe a little easier because, “I know where I’ll be come June.”
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Another tradition of the Fernhoppers’ Banquet has been the main speaker. Leaders of the forestry
field, national figures, governors, senators, poets, and writers have challenged and entertained the
crew from Peavy Hall through the years.
This brings up another of the valuable contributions the Forestry Club has made from the early
days until now. Their meetings have striven to bring professional issues to the school faculty and
students alike. They have brought to the campus, industry and government leaders as speakers at the
Club meetings and at special events. These speakers include such men as the Father of the United
States Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, presidents of corporations, educators, and controversial proponents of new ideas. In short, many of the sessions have been ones where new ideas were aired and
molded into shape to be applied out on the job.
As the Forestry Club grew with the establishment of the School and their own building on the
corner of 26th and Jefferson, communication with the forestry alumni, and even within their own
group, brought about the establishment of two publications. The Annual Cruise was first published
in 1920, and served as the school’s yearbook. It is available to the alumni and filled with current
forestry-related articles, the happenings of the school year, current jokes making their way across the
campus scene, and a directory of alumni. This last item helps the ex-Club members keep in contact
with their old buddies from their respective neck-of-the-woods assignments out in the big wide
world. The Annual Cruise continued until 1974, when it became difficult to finance the publication,
and also to find enough students willing to take on the publishing and editing jobs.
Sometime during these early days another paper, aptly name the High Lead, was started to
spread the word around the local halls, with a few copies being mailed to the Clubs on other
western university campuses. This little paper has been published periodically for most of the
Club’s history, and serves as a sounding board for new ideas, as well as supplying humor and
prose to fit the occasions. It’s an adaptable little news bulletin that seems to always find a
champion willing to serve his or her fellow students and badger them into contributing one
more article.
These recollections are mostly about how it was in the beginning, but, with the coming of the
‘sixties and ‘seventies, a new type of student and new circumstances developed. The students
didn’t always follow old traditions without questioning. They came from a society of television
and computers, fast transportation and large cities. They saw a world in travail, with new concerns of pollution of the air and water, and destruction of the productive capacity of many an
acre by the so-called advances of man. They didn’t follow the old order stating that “everyone
should be a Forestry Club member,” and many became nonjoiners of everything. During these
days, the Club struggled, membership dropped, faculty members got too busy to bother—became disenchanted and dropped their support of the Club. This period of time saw the women
of our communities stepping into areas that had always been men-only professions, and forestry is one of these areas. The feminine viewpoint began to be voiced in matters of Club activities, and “No Women Allowed” has become a long-forgotten issue.
With the coming of the ‘seventies and into the ‘eighties, the students have seen that the idealistic approach won’t change the world by itself, but needs the practical touch of the old timber beast of yesterday. And they have moved back to a middle-of-the-road approach. Today’s
student who is active in the Club is interested in more than just a good time, or asking, “What
is the Club going to do for me?” Today’s student is asking, “What can I do for the Club?” They
have been active in community projects during the last few years that rival some of the early124
day events. One that stands out for the City of Corvallis is the landscape plantings of forest
trees around the new Good Samaritan Hospital. Each year, as they grow and fully occupy the
field, there are those men and women who come back to Corvallis and say, “Hey, look at those
trees. I helped plant them.”
Today in this seventy-fifth year of forestry, the student organization known as the Forestry
Club is alive and thriving. It has changed from the good old days, even in name, to encompass
the broader concept of citizen, forester, and student. This new concept and the desire to be
more totally involved in the profession has led to the forming of a Society of American Foresters student chapter on the Oregon State University campus. This student chapter is oriented
toward providing a bridge from student to profession, and is aimed at getting the students and
professionals to rub shoulders more, much as was done in the so-called “good old days,” when
men were men and women were glad of it. The Society of American Foresters student chapter
is meant to fulfill the professional needs of the student with the Forestry Student Association
(Club) existing along side, to fulfill the social needs on the campus scene. This new cooperative
group also includes the forestry honorary society, Xi Sigma Pi, which has the role of coordinating the academic life of the student.
In summing up 75 years of Club activity, we have seen a move from a close-knit, special group
groping for a profession to one that is playing a major role in the development of that profession. As the profession matured and curriculum blossomed to include Forest Management,
Forest Engineering, Forest Products, Resource Recreation Management, Forest Science, with
all their many variations, the Club diverged and the role changed to give a broad-based representation. The change hasn’t been all bad, and we can look toward the next decade confident
that our student organization is going to produce the giants and workhorses of the profession,
those who will be prepared to step into the shoes of the giants of yesterday and today. One
thing is obvious as we look over the chronicles of the Club—those who led us during our student days are the ones who will lead us tomorrow. Three cheers for the Club!
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Index
Symbols
100 Road 107
500 Road 83, 112
600 Road 112
A
Adair Tract i, 33, 40, 47
Village 32, 33
Air Force 6, 35
Airlie 33
Annual Cruise 24, 119, 122
Applegate, Jesse 34
Arboretum
Peavy v
Day 41, 42, 96, 120, 121
Blake Homestead 35
BLM 2, 48, 51, 59
Blodgett Tract 70, 105
Bob Aufderheide 22
Boise Cascade 49
Botany Department 39, 58
Bridal Veil Lumber Company 2
British Columbia 18
Brownsville 105
Bureau of Indian Affairs 19, 39
Bureau of Land Management 2, 39
C
Caffall Brothers 99
California 7, 30, 36, 90
Army 6, 9, 10, 17, 21, 23, 28, 29, 33, 110
Calloway Creek 36, 73, 99, 107, 112
Association of Western Forestry Clubs 121, 123
Canada 18
Aufderheide Award 22
CCC i, 24, 28, 30, 73, 93, 109, 111
Austria 1
Civilian Conservation Corps 21
artifacts 32, 33, 111
Camp Adair 28
Atkinson, William (Bill) v, 70
Casey’s Arboretum v
Bob 22
Avery’s Park 21
Woodlot 21
B
Baker Creek 58, 87, 94, 99
Bean Hole Beans 110, 120, 121
beanies 23
Beaver Creek 44
Bellfountain 11, 90
Berry Creek i, 30, 33, 46, 107
Century West Engineering 47
clearcut 26, 47, 48, 72, 73, 84, 86, 87, 92, 95, 100, 104,
110
College of Forestry v, 57, 78, 109, 111, 112
Columbia County 21, 105
Columbus Day Storm 27, 47, 48, 49, 100, 102
Corvallis 10, 28, 32, 35, 38, 44, 46, 59, 68, 94, 97, 110,
119, 123
Corvallis Logging Company 46
Cronemiller Lake 28, 42, 46, 105, 112, 121
Crown Zellerbach 98, 104
Beuter v, 31, 38, 40, 41, 50, 51, 68, 72, 97, 102, 103,
107, 112
127
D
G
Davies
William A. i, 11, 12, 19, 22, 23, 27, 33, 40, 41, 45, 46,
47, 48, 49, 50, 62, 72, 76, 98, 103, 105
DeMoisy 22
Douglas-fir 31, 39, 57, 66, 75, 76, 79, 82, 86, 94, 98, 99,
100, 101, 110, 120, 121
Dunham Printing Company 3
Gangle 1, 12
Garver, Jeff v, 97, 103
Georgia-Pacific 11, 48, 109
Grand Ronde 35
Grantham, Jack 22, 26
H
Dunn i, 16, 41, 42, 50, 56
hemlock 11
Forest v, 15, 33, 38, 39, 40, 46, 47, 48, 52, 61, 69, 72,
90, 99, 101, 102, 103, 105
Hines Lumber Company 2
Paul i, v, 15, 16, 23, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48,
50, 52, 56, 61, 69, 72, 90, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103,
105
homesteads 11, 33
Hooven 103
Hoyt Arboretum 108
hunting 52, 53, 55, 78, 90, 117
E
Elk City 44
I
Endangered Species Act 106
ice storm 45, 105
F
J
Federal Land Bank 40, 41
Jackson Creek 93
Ferguson, Gary 48, 91
Jackson Place 93
Fernhopper ix, 18, 114, 121
James, Bill i, 11, 99
Fernhoppers 119, 121, 122
Japanese 7, 8, 9
First World War 3, 32, 61, 62, 73
Japanese-Americans 9
flume 32, 62, 63, 64, 69, 70, 71, 74
Forest Engineering 11, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, 44, 45, 49,
60, 102, 123
Forest Grove 104
Jefferson 12, 122
K
Kansas 7, 110
forest history 97
Kerr Nursing Home 3
forest inventory 97, 103, 106
Kings Valley 88, 89
Forest Management 10, 11, 16, 18, 22, 23, 45, 51, 102,
103, 104, 110, 123
L
Forest Products 16, 17, 22, 24, 26, 110, 123
Forestry Club 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 42, 54, 61, 71, 97, 109,
110, 111, 112, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123
Forestry Club Cabin 20, 24, 27, 54, 61, 71, 97, 109, 111,
112, 119, 120
Forest Service 2, 10, 17, 20, 21, 39, 48, 51, 112, 122
128
Larson Lumber Company 48
Lewisburg 25, 34, 92, 94, 96, 99
Lewisburg Saddle 25, 34, 92, 94, 99
Lickey, Bill 47
logging 1, 11, 12, 14, 20, 21, 24, 27, 42, 44, 45, 46, 49,
50, 52, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 78, 81, 83, 84,
86, 87, 95, 98, 105, 106, 111, 121
Peavy 1, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 38, 42, 44,
45, 54, 65, 108, 109, 114, 119, 120, 122
Logging i, 44, 46, 110
M
George 1, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 38, 42,
44, 45, 54, 65, 108, 109, 119, 120, 122
Marx, Bob 14
Marys Peak 21, 44, 120
Peavy Arboretum v, 24, 25, 30, 54, 108, 109, 120
Mason 16
Philippines. 7, 107
McDonald
Portland-Umpqua Road 34, 35
Peavy’s Cabin 26, 27
River 13, 32
Portland 1, 2, 3, 9, 34, 35, 44, 59, 108, 119
McDaniel, Vern 29, 30
Mary v, 12, 15, 20, 21, 28, 30, 31, 34, 36, 38, 39, 44,
46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 56, 58, 65, 68, 98, 99, 100, 101,
102, 105, 120
Powder House 108, 112
Price, Frank 21
Q
McDonald-Dunn v, 52, 101, 105
McDonald Forest 12, 15, 20, 21, 28, 31, 34, 36, 38,
39, 44, 46, 48, 49, 52, 58, 68, 98, 99, 100, 101,
102, 120
R
railroads 23
military 9, 10, 17, 33, 34, 40, 72
Randall, Casey 22, 59, 81
Mitzy Point 104
red tie 23
Modoc Indians 35
Richardson, Ernie 104
Moore, Harriet 35
rifle ranges 33
Road
N
100, 500 4, 12, 20, 28, 44, 45, 47, 49, 54, 55, 70, 90,
97, 103, 108, 112
National Industrial Recovery Act 28
Nettleton, Harry 19, 20, 25, 35, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 51,
98, 112
roads
100 4, 12, 20, 28, 44, 45, 47, 49, 54, 55, 70, 90, 97,
103, 108, 112
Road 25
O
Robinson, Dan 22
Oak Creed Saddle 31, 39, 57, 66, 75, 76, 79, 82, 86, 94,
98, 99, 100, 101, 110, 120, 121
Oak Creek 11, 24, 25, 28, 32, 45, 46, 57, 58, 62, 64, 72,
88, 98, 99, 104, 106, 108, 110, 111
Oak Creek Guard Station 57
Old Territorial Road 34, 36. See also Roads
Oregon Agricultural College 119, 121
P
Patterson, Harry 16, 22, 23, 25, 41, 87, 94, 110, 120
Patterson Road 25
Pearl Harbor 9
Rowley, Marion i, ix, 2, 7, 48, 98, 104, 114, 119
Rowley and Parker Tree Farm Service 48, 98
S
SAF v
sawmill 2, 5, 24, 32, 33, 39, 61, 65, 69, 78, 81, 85, 107,
110
sawmills 33, 34
school sawmill 24, 61
Schreiner Road 25
Second World War 2, 6, 16
Siletz 24, 35
129
skid road 2, 65, 83, 108
skid roads 45
skid trail 63, 74, 83
skid trails 83, 112
Smith, Greenberry 31, 34, 35
Snodgrass, Jim 22
snow storm 45
Soap Creek i, iii, v, 30, 32, 33, 34, 58, 80, 99, 103, 106
Soap Creek Valley i, iii, v, 30, 33
V
Valsetz 24, 49, 91
Vancouver Island 18
vandalism 53, 54, 70
Vandals 27
Vernonia 98
Vineyard Mountain Estates 54, 55
W
Society of American Foresters v
wars 1
Soils 107
Willamette Industries 44
soils 63, 70, 97, 100
Wheeler, Bill 23
Spaulding Logging Company 44
Wilson, Bob (Robert) 22, 62, 110
Starker 20, 22, 29, 30, 87, 88, 119
World War I 67
State Forestry Department Office 109
Worthington, Dick (Richard) 21
Spaulding Tract 11, 44, 45, 53, 102, 120
Thurman (T.J.) 20, 22, 29, 30, 87, 88, 119
E. E. 22, 62, 110
World War II 6, 16, 28, 40, 107, 119
Stoltenberg, Carl 32, 50
Straub, Bob 14
Sturgis, Harold 80, 89
X
Xi Sigma Pi 123
Y
Sulphur Springs Road 95, 106
Sutherlin 10
Suver 33
T
Z
Zamboanga 7
Tampico i, 34, 35, 36
road i, 34, 35, 36
Tampico Road 34
Taylor-Hart Lumber Company 46
Thingvold, Martin 44, 45
timber sale 20, 51
Toledo 44
U
UBC 18
Umpqua Plywood Corporation 11, 17, 44
USDA Forest Service 10, 39
130